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THE BATTLE OF ARBELA 
Painting by Giuseppe Sciutti 





THE 


3 


WORLD’S TRUE HISTORY 

BY 

EDGAR SANDERSON 

n 

AUTHOR OF 

“ANCIENT EMPIRES,” “MODERN EUROPE,” 
“HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION” 

AND 

MANY DISTINGUISHED HISTORIANS 


CONTEMPORARY HISTORY AND THE WORLD WAR 

BY 

FREDERICK L. NUSSBAUM, PH. D. 

PROFESSOR OF HISTORY AT TEMPLE UNIVERSITY 


INTRODUCTION BY 

WITT BOWDEN, PH. D. 

ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF HISTORY AT THE 
UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA 

•> > J> 

vol: i. 

ANCIENT AND MEDIAEVAL HISTORY 

PHILADELPHIA 

THOMAS NOLAN 


1923 















D Z4- 
Sse 

142 - 3 , 


COPYRIGHT 
1699 , 1906.1913 

Copyright 1923 

BY 

THOMAS NOLAN 


* 



©C1A705802 


CONTENTS VOL. I 


PAGE 

Introduction . 1 

Importance of History. 1 

Families and Races of Mankind. 4 

Ancient China. 10 

Ancient India. 16 

Great Oriental Peoples. 22 

Ancient Egyptians. 24 

Hittites . 42 

Chaldeans . 45 

Assyrians . 48 

Babylonians . 53 

Israelites . 56 

Phoenicians . 62 

Medes and Persians. 69 

History of Greece. 82 

History of Rome. 176 

Mediaeval History. 294 

Rise of the Saracens. 309 

Empire of Charlemagne. 320 

Beginnings of Modern Nations. 325 

Growth of the Papal Power. 333 

The Crusades. 339 

England's Rise as a Nation. 357 

Consolidation of the French Monarchy. 372 

Progress of Royalty in England. 378 

Development of Other European Nations. 384 

The Feudal System. 395 

Chivalry . 400 

Civilization in the Middle Ages. 408 

































ILLUSTRATIONS VOL. I 


The Battle of Arbela. 

Herodotus . 

Judith . 

Papirius Insulted by the Gauls. 

Greeks Returning After the Battle of Salamis 

Pindar at the Olympian Games. 

Grecian Acropolis at Athens. 

Roman Chariot Race. 

Blind Appius Claudius Led Into the Senate. .. 

Nero and His Mother, Agrippina. 

Reconstruction of “Roma Immortalis”. 

Horace at Tibur. 


page 
1 " 
41 

56 ^ 
73 - 
88 - 
137 
152 
169 ^ 
184 - 
233' 
248 
265 / 


Huns Plundering a Roman Villa. 280 

Entry of Mohammed II Into Constantinople. 297 

Godfrey Enters Jerusalem. 312 

Charles The Bold’s Flight After the Battle of Morat 329 

The Crusades—The Triumph of the Cross. 344 

Boabdil, The Last Moor of Grenada, Surrenders. 393 

Group of Authors, Dante, Boccaccio and Others. 408 





















INTRODUCTION 


History is a form oi racial memory. Among the 
lower animals (to cite one of the many ingenious 
contrasts between them and human beings) the 
racial memory is in the rudimentary form of the 
instincts. Among men, it assumes, in addition, the 
rational forms by which individuals and groups 
utilize the accumulated knowledge and experience 
of past generations and ages. In these very simple 
and yet very significant facts is found the answer 
to the questions, What is history? and Why read 
history? To wipe out the long and oftentimes 
tedious and painful and yet fascinating record of the 
accumulation of knowledge and experience would 
mean virtually a reversion to a condition in which 
individuals and peoples would be dependent upon 
the instinctive memory of the animal world and the 
oral traditions and customs of primitive society. 

There are many persons who have little share 
in this conscious, rational memory of mankind. 
Their whole social environment is to be sure an 
accumulation of past experience and effort, but 
they themselves live in a narrow, cramped little 
world of banking or farming or social functions; 
they have only slight and casual contacts with the 
larger world, literally forced upon them by the 
headlines of the papers or by the pictures of the 
screen. Other persons, from one cause or another, 
are enabled to enrich their lives with knowledge of 


i 


2 


INTRODUCTION 


the larger world of their own time, and to become 
by degrees not merely heirs but actual possessors of 
treasures of all the ages. There are similar differ¬ 
ences among nations and larger groups. The Anglo- 
Saxons of the fifth century hunted, fished, fought 
and lived in crude and primitive manner, adapting 
themselves more or less instinctively to their sur¬ 
roundings, with little knowledge of the past and 
with less thought of the future. Modern English¬ 
men rationally adapt their surroundings to their 
own desires, extracting in a thousand cunning ways 
the treasures of earth and air and water, making 
distant regions minister to their wants, and living 
a life well-nigh as far removed from that of their 
fifth-century ancestors as their life was remote from 
that of sub-human creatures. And yet in brain 
power and capacity, the Anglo-Saxon was no doubt 
equal to the modern Englishman. These differences 
are the result not of superior biological heredity but 
of a very much greater racial memory or social in¬ 
heritance. The differences between civilized or 
“advanced” peoples and uncivilized or “backward” 
peoples of the present age are largely traceable to 
the same cause. The belief that either nations or 
individuals that have no history are happy is based 
on the doubtful assumption that ignorance is bliss. 

The social inheritance includes, to be sure, much 
that is not adapted to the changing conditions of 
society today; and the way in which the accumulated 
knowledge and experience of the past is used is not 
necessarily either rational or beneficial. But these 
considerations merely give added importance to a 
rational study of the past in the light of present 
needs and conditions, and make even more urgent 


INTRODUCTION 


3 


the need for historical knowledge among all citi¬ 
zens who desire to see our mighty social heritage 
used intelligently and for the benefit of all rather 
than blindly, or worse, for the exclusive advantage 
of powerful individuals or dominant groups. 

Why is it that weaker individuals and groups 
and races are exploited by the stronger? Obviously, 
because some individuals and groups and races are 
weak and others are strong. But why these diver¬ 
sities of power? The answer is of course far from 
simple, but a decisive source of strength is superior 
knowledge of the social inheritance. The most 
powerful are in general those who have the largest 
accounts in the bank of the accumulated knowledge 
and experience of mankind; and the weakest are 
those whose share of the common social heritage is 
the most limited. A single illustration will suffice. 
Before the closing decades of the nineteenth cen¬ 
tury, the history of mankind was to the Japanese 
a sealed book, and Japan found herself helpless in 
the presence of the merchants and warships of 
western peoples. It was by an expansion of 
knowledge enabling her to share the social heritage 
of western peoples that she has come to share their 
power and to protect herself from the exploiting 
forces of western imperialism. China, India—in a 
word, the so-called “backward regions of the world” 
—are helpless largely because they have not gone 
beyond their own unaided attainments and have 
not made use of the larger inheritance of mankind. 
The same general conception applies to individuals 
and to groups within nations. Such conditions are 
likely to prevail till there is a nation-wide and world¬ 
wide diffusion of the knowledge which means power. 


4 


INTRODUCTION 


But of course the social heritage is more com¬ 
prehensive than the accumulated knowledge of tech¬ 
nical processes which are largely the basis of mate¬ 
rial and political power. It includes art, science, 
literature, philosophy, social relations—the whole 
range of human experience. Undue emphasis on 
technical processes of production and the accumu¬ 
lation of wealth has made western civilization dom¬ 
inantly materialistic. Americans and Europeans are 
apt to be egotistic—which often means that they 
are selfish and greedy for world power and the 
domination of the peoples and resources of other 
regions. Oriental peoples, on the other hand, have 
been inclined to develop philosophical culture and 
social concepts which, while admirable in many 
ways, have hindered their scientific and practical 
advancement. The world-wide study of the history 
of v/orld civilization is potentially if not in fact an 
important means of promoting a wholesome change 
of mental attitude in respect to the relations be¬ 
tween peoples and groups. Individual, national, 
and environmental diversities tend thus to become 
embraced, without harm to their distinctive charac¬ 
teristics, in a unifying concept of mutual inter¬ 
dependence and mutual helpfulness. Such a ten¬ 
dency will go far toward removing the causes of 
destructive conflicts. 

An understanding of general history is pecu¬ 
liarly important to Americans of our generation 
because of the altered relations of our country to 
the other countries of the world. We have been 
forced, alike by the expanding contacts of our 
people and by the conflicts among European coun¬ 
tries, to abandon our traditional policy of aloofness; 


INTRODUCTION 


5 


and it is hardly possible that we shall be able to 
return to it. In any case, we find ourselves bound 
up with other countries and peoples in a network 
of economic and cultural and political relationships; 
and if the network of such relationships is to be 
orderly, peace-promoting, and mutually helpful, 
there must be an intelligent and sympathetic under¬ 
standing of other peoples as well as of ourselves. 

Such tendencies are of course influenced by fac¬ 
tors other than the study of world history; but 
whatever else may be needed, it is necessary for us 
to learn some of the lessons that history best can 
teach us: that other peoples as well as ourselves 
have contributed significantly to our common civil¬ 
ization; that they have problems similar to our own 
and growing like ours out of historical conditions; 
and that they have rights and interests which can¬ 
not be ignored without common dangers. The com¬ 
plex and interdependent nature of modern society 
can in fact be understood only when viewed in the 
light of historical knowledge such as the present 
series of histories is intended to supply. These 
volumes therefore may be made significant to the 
individual reader not only in gratifying his natural 
curiosity and enlarging his personality, but in 
enabling him to maintain a helpful attitude in rela¬ 
tion to the larger problems of his country and of 
the world. 

There are two general types of historical writ¬ 
ings, the one technical, the other popular in char¬ 
acter. The present series belongs to the second 
type. Large numbers of students have worked at 
their several tasks to discover the records of the 
past, to classify and criticize them, and to use them 


6 


INTRODUCTION 


as the necessary materials for reconstructing the 
past. Historical scholarship asserts that no state¬ 
ment concerning the past should be accepted unless 
it is verifiable. Acceptance of legends, myths, par¬ 
ables, unverified statements by authorities no mat¬ 
ter how venerable—it is this which makes of the 
real past a closed book. The process of verifica¬ 
tion is to be sure extremely difficult, and must be 
interpreted in the rather dim light of the limitations 
of human intelligence and of available records. And 
yet the scholar with fidelity to the historical spirit 
must do no less, in the process of verification, than 
get as near as possible to the facts and events of 
the past by going back to the records left by the 
persons most directly connected with the facts or 
events described. It is of course impossible for the 
general reader to adhere strictly to this ideal. Even 
the writer of a general history must content him¬ 
self largely with the results of the painstaking re¬ 
searches of technical historians. 

These results the writers of the present his¬ 
tories have utilized in such manner as to appeal to 
a wide range of readers. In a series of such mag¬ 
nitude, written by different authorities, the critical 
reader may discover points of view with which he 
cannot agree. This is to be expected and even 
desired; the reader as well as the writer of history 
should remember that the true historical spirit must 
be keenly critical before it can become soundly con¬ 
structive. 

Readers by the aid of these volumes can ap¬ 
proach the subject of history from varied points of 
view. The three volumes of general narrative his¬ 
tory present in concise form the leading facts as a 


INTRODUCTION 


7 


necessary background for an intelligent study of 
special phases of history. The other volumes, in 
the pleasing form of biographies, enable the reader 
to pursue such special studies as may particularly 
appeal to him. As a result of varied interests and 
points of view on the part of readers, the benefits 
and satisfactions naturally will vary. If the general 
conceptions of the nature of history and of his¬ 
torical scholarship are kept in mind, it is believed 
that the volumes will have an added meaning to the 
attentive reader, and that the educational value of 
the entire series will be increased. 









ANCIENT AND MEDIAEVAL 

HISTORY 

IMPORTANCE OF HISTORY 

History is a record of the doings of civilized mankind, 
in its progress toward the greatest of political and social 
blessings—a rational freedom of thought and action. 
History deals with the life only of political communities, 
or nations, and not with races of men who have made lit¬ 
tle advance from a primitive state. The special duty of 
history is to sketch the career and describe the condition of 
those great nations whose ideas and institutions, or whose 
achievements in art, science, politics, literature, and war 
were remarkable in their own epoch, or, by influencing 
other nations, helped to make the civilized world what it 

is now. 

The Eastern nations did not reach to the height of the 
idea that mankind is, and ought to be, free; they only 
knew of freedom for one—the despot to whose caprices 
they became victims and slaves. The Greeks first be¬ 
came conscious of freedom as the right of mankind, but 
they, as well as the Romans, knew only of freedom for a 
part of mankind—their own citizens, and so had a system 
of slave-holding bound up with the free constitution which 
those citizens enjoyed. The Teutonic nations, aided by 
Christianity, first became conscious that man, as such, is 
free, and by slow degrees slavery was abolished, and con¬ 
stitutional freedom was established in modern states, 
organized in a rational way. The history of the world is 
an account of the growth among mankind of this con¬ 
voy. i—* 


2 


ANCIENT AND MEDIAEVAL HISTORY 


sciousness of freedom for the race. This is the grand 
aim which the world’s history has seen, at least in part, 
attained—the acquirement of freedom for the heaven-born 
spirit of man. On this altar have been laid the sublime 
sacrifices of patriots and heroes; to this pole-star, amid the 
constant change of conditions and events, the magnet guid¬ 
ing the track of this great laboring sorrow-laden bark of 
humanity has been, on a wide view, ever true. The 
springs of action in history are the various needs, char¬ 
acters, passions, and talents of men. Passing to the pic¬ 
turesque view of this great subject, we find that “the 
world’s history is a grand panorama of events and changes, 
the sight of which calls into play all the emotions of the 
soul of man—love of goodness, enjoyment of beauty, 
admiration of greatness; hope and fear for the results of 
struggles in which human action and suffering are 
involved; pity for the fallen greatness both of men and of 
empires; joy in the issuing of new life from the ashes of 
the funeral-pile of nations that have consumed themselves 
away.” 

The grand crisis in the history of the world is the con¬ 
test between freedom and despotism which was, in 
Grecian history, decided on the plain of Marathon, where 
the Greeks overthrew the power of Persia, and saved 
Europe from falling under the rule of an Eastern despot. 
From that hour it was possible for Europe to work out and 
to enjoy true liberty and civilization in the combination 
of the personal freedom of the private citizen with a will¬ 
ing submission to the supremacy of public law. In the 
Roman Empire we have the spectacle of almost the whole 
civilized world ruled by one state, upon a system adapted 
with consummate skill for the maintenance of law and 
order throughout. When the Roman Empire perished 
under the pressure of foreign influence, aided by internal 


IMPORTANCE OF HISTORY 


3 


corruption and decay, the vigorous races of northern and 
central Europe began a new development of civilization 
which, combined with Christianity, by slow degrees made 
Europe what we see it now. The shattered fragments of 
the Roman Empire, under the pressure of the conquering 
tribes, assumed new forms, and new nations arose to 
become the founders of the state-system of Modern 
Europe. , 

The political and social life of Greece and Rome have 
directly influenced all European nations down to the pres¬ 
ent hour. The present character of the English-speaking 
race is closely connected with the facts that, at Athens, a 
citizen enjoyed absolute political and social freedom, and 
that in the Roman system all personal feelings and tastes 
were subjected to the rigorous supremacy of absolute law. 
All ancient history leads up, through Greece, to Rome tri¬ 
umphant ; all modern history comes down to us from Rome 
beaten and broken. This is the ample vindication of the 
claims of Greek and Roman history to the study and regard 
of modern readers. How stands the case with India and 
China, as contrasted with Greece and Rome ? The China¬ 
man was, and is, a pedant; the Hindoo was, and is, a 
dreamer; the Greek was a thinker and an artist; the Roman 
was a man. For European civilization, the pedant could 
teach nothing; the dreamer has done nothing; the thinker 
and artist developed, molded, and improved himself and 
all around him, and all that came after him; the man con¬ 
quered and governed the world. 

It is interesting and important to notice the geographi¬ 
cal conditions under which great nations have arisen. 
This has always occurred either in valley-plains, the 
regions traversed and watered by some great river and its 
tributaries, or on a coast which has afforded the means 
of commercial intercourse with other nations. Thus 


4 


ANCIENT AND MEDIAEVAL HISTORY 


India and China consist of valley-plains, and have given 
rise to great nations, lying beyond the scope of the general 
history of the world, though curious and interesting in 
themselves. Babylonia, which had the Euphrates and the 
Tigris for its rivers, was one of the great empires of old. 
Egypt was watered by the Nile. In all these regions, 
agriculture provided plenteous food for man, and soon 
gave rise to property in land; this property was the origin 
of legal relations, and so we have the basis of a state. The 
chief seat of the history of the ancient world was the great 
Mediterranean Sea. “On its shores,” says Hegel, “lie 
Greece, a focus of light; Syria, the center of Judaism and 
of Christianity; southeast, not far away, are Mecca and 
Medina, cradle of the Mussulman faith; Rome, Carthage, 
Alexandria, lay all on the Mediterranean, mighty heart of 
the old world. Around this great uniting sea, a bond 
between the three great continents of the eastern half of 
this our globe, all ancient history of the higher value 
gathers.” Nations really great in arts and arms, in polity 
and learning, have arisen only in the temperate zone of 
the earth. The reason is that there alone has nature 
allowed man to devote his time and powers to self-culture. 
In the torrid and the frigid zones, the struggle with the 
forces of nature is too fierce and constant to allow men to 
do more than reach a certain point of civilization. 


THE FAMILIES AND RACES OF MANKIND 

Ethnologists have divided mankind into five leading 
families—the Caucasian, Mongolian or Tartar, Negro or 
Ethiopian, Malay, and American—or, according to color, 
the white, yellow, black, brown, and red races. The 
epithet Caucasian is taken from the mountain-range 
between the Black and Caspian Seas, near to which region 


FAMILIES AND RACES 


5 


the finest specimens of man—regarded physically—have 
always been found. Mongolian is derived from the wan¬ 
dering races who inhabit the plateaux of Central Asia. 
Negro is the Spanish word for black. Malay is connected 
with the peninsula of Malacca, where some of the race 
founded a state in the Thirteenth Century. American is 
applied to the copper-colored race found in that continent 
when it was discovered. 

The Caucasian race has now spread, through coloniza- 
tion, over the whole world, but its proper region is Europe, 
Western Asia, and the northern strip of Africa. Nine- 
tenths of the people of Europe belong to the Caucasian 
family, the other tenth consisting of the Turks, the 
Magyars (in Hungary), the Finns, the Laplanders, and 
the pagan tribe called Samoyeds in the extreme northeast 
of European Russia. In Asia, the Caucasians include the 
Arabs, the Persians, the Afghans, and the Hindoos. In 
Africa, the Caucasians are spread over the whole north, 
from the Mediterranean to the south of the Sahara Desert, 
and to the farthest border of Abyssinia. In North and 
South America two-thirds of the people are now Cauca¬ 
sian. In Australia and New Zealand the Caucasian colon¬ 
ists have almost extinguished the native races. 

The Mongolian family includes the Mongols proper, 
or the wandering and settled tribes between China and 
Siberia; the Japanese, Chinese, Burmese, Siamese, and 
other peoples in the southeast and east of Asia, and the 
native tribes of the Siberian plains. The Turks, Magyars, 
Finns, Laplanders, and Samoyeds, in Europe, and the 
Esquimaux, in America, are all Mongolian. 

The proper home of the Negro race is Africa, to the 
south of the Sahara. The Malay tribes inhabit the 
peninsula of Malacca and the adjacent islands, and include 
also the people of Madagascar, the New Zealanders, and 


6 


ANCIENT AND MEDIAEVAL HISTORY 


the dwellers in most of the Polynesian archipelagoes. The 
American or red variety of mankind includes the native 
races of North and South America. 

Of all these races of mankind the only one whose his¬ 
tory is important for us is the Caucasian or white race, 
to which belong the people of those states and empires 
of old—the Egyptian, the Assyrian, the Babylonian, the 
Hebrew, the Phoenician, the Hindoo, the Persian, the 
Greek, and the Roman. This race is historical, because it 
displays the most highly civilized type of mankind—that 
type whose progress and achievements are the true prov¬ 
ince of history. This grand stock—the Caucasian race— 
has been classified into three main branches—the Aryan, 
or Indo-European, the Semitic and the Hamitic. The term 
Aryan is derived either from one ancient word implying 
that they were “cultivators of the soil,” or from another 
meaning “worthy, noble.” The earliest known home of 
the Aryan people was the high table-land of Central Asia, 
near the sources of the Oxus and Jaxartes. The great 
philologist Max Muller says that “the parent-stock (from 
whom all the Aryan tribes have sprung) was a small clan 
settled probably on the highest elevation of Central Asia, 
speaking a language not yet Sanskrit, or Greek, or Ger¬ 
man, but containing the dialectic roots of all. There 
was a time when the ancestors of the Celts, the Ger¬ 
mans, the Slavonians, the Greeks and Italians, the Per¬ 
sians and Hindoos were living together, separate from the 
ancestors of the Semitic race.” The Semitic branch is so 
called from Shem, son of Noah, described in the Bible as 
ancestor of some of the nations which it includes. The 
Hamitic branch is named from Ham, the son of Noah, and 
ancestor of some of its peoples. The Aryan branch 
includes nearly all the present and past nations of Europe 
—the Greeks, Latins, Teutons or Germans (including the 


FAMILIES AND RACES 


7 


English race), Celts and Slavonians, as well as three 
Asiatic peoples—the Hindoos, the Persians, and the 
Afghans. The Semitic branch includes, as its chief his¬ 
torical representatives, the Hebrews, Phoenicians, Assy¬ 
rians, Arabs, and Babylonians. The Hamitic branch is 
represented in history by one great ancient nation—the 
Egyptians. 

A leading part in the history of the world has been, and 
it still, played by the Aryan nations. The only great 
Hamitic nation—the Egyptians—became highly civil¬ 
ized at a very early time, and exerted a marked influence 
on others, and so on the civilization of succeeding ages. 
The Semitic race is highly distinguished in the records of 
religious belief, because with them originated three faiths 
whose main doctrine is that there is but one God—namely, 
the Jewish, the Christian, and the Mahometan. Apart 
from this, and with the special exception of the ancient 
Phcenicians, the Semitic nations have not done so much for 
mankind as the Aryan. They have not been generally 
distinguished for progress and enterprise, but have mainly 
kept to their old home between the Mediterranean, the 
river Tigris, and the Red Sea. It is the Aryans that have 
been the parents of new nations, and that have reached 
the highest point of intellectual development, as shown in 
their political freedom, and in their science, literature 
and art. 

The glory of the Aryan element is shown in the fact 
that the ancient Greek and Roman, the modern German, 
Englishman, American and Frenchman are all of Aryan 
race. The Caucasian presents us with the highest type 
among the five families of man: the Aryan branch of the 
Caucasian family presents us with the noblest pattern of 
that highest type. The Aryan in history shows all that is 


8 


ANCIENT AND MEDIEVAL HISTORY 


most worthy of renown in energy, and enterprise, and skill, 
and claims of right the foremost place on history’s page. 

At some remote period of the past the forefathers of 
the Hindoos and the Persians were one people, living to¬ 
gether on the plateau north and northwest of the Hima¬ 
laya Mountains. Under the pressure of numbers, and 
spurred onward by their enterprising nature, these Aryan 
peoples began a movement of migration from their an¬ 
cestral seat, a portion of them going southward into Hin- 
dostan, another portion westward into Persia, where they 
developed into the Hindoo and Persian nations. Some 
philologists maintain that this was the seat of the fathers 
of the whole Aryan race, but later authorities place them 
in eastern or northern Europe. Of them the Celtic 
branch was the first to invade the west. They appear to 
have spread themselves over a great part of the continent; 
but as a distinct people they are now only found inhabiting 
parts of the British Isles and France. Later came the 
Italic—Latin—tribes, who drove the Celts out of the pen¬ 
insula now known as Italy; the Hellenic—or Grecian— 
tribes, who occupied the peninsula of Greece; the Teutonic 
tribes, who drove out the Celts from Central Europe, and 
finally occupied Denmark—Sweden and Norway. The 
last comers of the Aryans were the Lithuanians and 
Slavonians—the Slavonians being now spread over Rus¬ 
sia, Poland, and Bohemia, while the Lithuanians settled 
on the Baltic Coast, partly in Prussia, partly in Russia. 
The greatest part of these movements took place 
before the dawn of history, and thus was Europe gradually 
overspread by successive waves of Aryan settlement. 

The proof is here simple and decisive. The compar¬ 
ison of words in Sanskrit, the ancient language of the 
Hindoos; Zend, the olden speech of Persia; ( week, Latin, 


FAMILIES AND RACES 


9 


English, and other tongues, has shown that all these lan¬ 
guages come from a distant common original, spoken by 
some race yet unparted by migration. In all, or nearly all, 
these tongues, the names of common things and persons, 
the words expressing simple implements and actions, the 
words for family relations, such as father, sister, mother, 
brother, daughter, son, the earlier numerals, the pronouns, 
the very endings of the nouns and verbs, are substantially 
the same. Accident could not have caused this phenome¬ 
non; and, since many of the nations speaking thus have 
for long ages been parted from each other by vast stretches 
of the earth’s broad surface, they could not learn them, 
in historic times, one from another. Borrowing and imi¬ 
tation being thus excluded, the only possible account is that 
these words and forms were carried with them by the 
migratory Aryan tribes as part of the possessions once 
shared by all in their one original home. The study of 
these Aryan tongues has also told what progress had been 
made by this, the king of races, before the time arrived 
for starting south and west, to fill, to conquer, and to 
civilize the Western world. Whatever words are alike in 
all or nearly all these Aryan tongues, must be the names 
of implements, or institutions, or ideas, used, started, or 
conceived before the first wave of migration made its way. 
We thus learn that, at that far-distant time, the Aryans 
had houses, ploughed the earth, and ground their corn in 
mills. The family life was settled—basis as it is of all 
society and law. The Aryans had sheep and herds of cat¬ 
tle, horses, and dogs, and goats, and bees; they drank a 
beverage made of honey; knew and could work in copper, 
silver, gold; fought with the sword and bow; had the 
beginnings of kingly rule; looked up and worshiped either 
the sky itself, or One whom they regarded as the God who 


IO ANCIENT AND MEDIAEVAL HISTORY 

ruled there. Thus far above the savage state the Aryan 
race had risen. 

All history is really one unbroken whole, but for prac¬ 
tical convenience it has been divided into Ancient History, 
ending with the breaking up of the dominion of Rome in 
the Fifth Century (A. D. 476); Mediaeval History, from 
the downfall of Rome to about the middle of the Fifteenth 
Century; and Modern History, from that part of the 
Fifteenth Century to the present day. 

CHINA 

China is one of the oldest and strangest of nations. At 
a very early period she advanced to the state in which 
she now is, with the exclusion of all change in her system, 
and with an apparent incapacity for vital progress. China 
has always been a subject of marvel to Europeans, as a 
country which, self-originated, appeared to have no con¬ 
nection with the outer world. Recently some eminent 
scholars have maintained that by researches into the most 
ancient writings of the Chinese they have been able to dis¬ 
cover an early communication or connection between 
China and Western Asia, and that the culture of China 
must have borrowed various elements from an earlier civil¬ 
ization in Babylonia. The people belong to the Mon¬ 
golian family of man. 

China proper, sloping eastward from a mountainous 
interior, sinks by successive terraces into a vast level tract 
of unequaled fertility, formed by the alluvial deposits of 
its great rivers, the Yang-tse (‘‘Son of the Ocean”), and 
the Hoang-ho (“Yellow River,” from the color of its 
mud). Its temperate climate and rich soil, productive in 
wheat, barley, rice, roots, and green crops, favored the 


CHINA 


11 

early and rapid growth in numbers of a people dis¬ 
tinguished by skill and industry in agriculture. 

The traditions of China, setting aside fabulous absurd¬ 
ities, go back to 3,000 years before Christ, and one of their 
sacred books, the Shu-king (treating of history and of the 
government and laws of the ancient monarchs), begins 
with the Emperor Yao, 2357 B. C. About 600 B. C. 
the philosopher Lao-tse was born. He is famous as the 
founder of a part of Chinese religion, called “Taou-tse” 
or “Worship of Reason/’ and as the author of the “Tao-te- 
king” or “Book of Reason and Virtue.” He teaches a 
kind of Deism in theology, and a sort of Stoicism in prac¬ 
tical philosophy. 

About 550 B. C. the great philosopher Confucius was 
born. His name is a Latinized form of the Chinese word 
“Kong-fu-tse, i. e., “the teacher, Kong.” This great 
teacher of religion and morals is still venerated by his 
countrymen. He was of royal descent, and held high 
office at court, which he left to become the founder of a 
philosophical sect and an earnest instructor of the people. 
After his death, about B. C. 480, the Chinese worshiped 
him as a god. He taught that there was but one God 
and one Emperor, to whom all rulers of other nations are 
as vassals. His moral teaching dwelt on reverence for 
ancestors, benevolence, justice, virtue, and honesty, the 
observance of all usages and customs once introduced, rev¬ 
erence for old age, and strict discipline for children. He 
inculcated the peaceful virtues of domestic life, and justice 
and humanity as duties of monarchs. He praises also the 
delights of friendship, and teaches the forgiveness of 
offences. He revised the five Kings or sacred books of 
the Chinese, documents similar, as regards the estimation 
in which they are held in China, to the Mosaic records of 
the Jews, or to the Vedas of the Hindoos, and the 


i2 ANCIENT AND MEDIAEVAL HISTORY 


Homeric poems of the Greeks. These old books are the 
foundation of all Chinese studies. Besides the Shu-king, 
there are the Y-king, a metaphysical work; the Shi-king, 
a book of ancient poems; the Li-king, dealing with the cus¬ 
toms and ceremonial observances connected with the 
Emperor and the state functionaries; and the Tshun-tsin, 
a history of China in the time of Confucius. 

In the Third Century B. C. the Great Wall of China, 
1,500 miles in length, was built on the northern frontier, 
to defend it against the inroads of the Huns, who, how¬ 
ever, broke through the wall at the beginning of the Sec¬ 
ond Century B. C. and overran the country. The Chinese 
Emperors bought off the barbarians by a regular tribute 
of money and silk, as in England Ethelred II paid Dane- 
geld to his foes. 

The famous Mongol Emperor Jenghis Khan, who 
reigned from A. D. 1206 to 1227, invaded China, took the 
royal city of Pekin, and annexed some of the northern 
provinces. In A. D. 1260 the Mongol Emperor Kublai 
Khan, a grandson of Jenghis, conquered the whole of 
Northern China, to which, in 1279, he added Southern 
China, and so became the ruler of the whole country. 
Kublai Khan thus founded the Mongol dynasty of China, 
and removed the capital from Nankin to Pekin. 

At this time an interesting connection between China 
and Europe arose. The celebrated Venetian traveler, 
Marco Polo, explored the strange Eastern land for the 
first time, and lived for seventeen years at the court of 
Kublai Khan, about whom he gives some interesting infor¬ 
mation in the trustworthy book of travels which his own 
age rejected as fabulous. 

About the middle of the Seventeenth Century the 
Manchoos, from the northeast, invaded and conquered the 
country and established the Manchoo dynasty, which still 


CHINA 


*3 


reigns there, the language of the conquerors being that 
used at court and for official documents. 

In recent times the East India Company established a 
trade with China, and in 1793 Lord Macartney was sent 
by George III as Ambassador. He had several inter¬ 
views with the Emperor, but the mission had no result 
beyond the insight it gave into Chinese character and cus¬ 
toms. In 1816 Lord Amherst’s embassy tried to obtain 
permission for a British Minister to reside at Pekin, and 
sought the opening of ports on the northern coast to 
British trade. Lord Amherst did not even succeed in see¬ 
ing the Chinese Emperor, owing to his refusal to perform 
the ceremony of Koutou, or prostration at the Celestial 
ruler’s feet, and returned to England with a letter to the 
Prince Regent, which contained the words, “I have sent 
thine ambassadors back to their own country without 
punishing them for the high crime they have committed” 
(in approaching me). This revealed the secret of China’s 
failure to make real advances from her stationary condi¬ 
tion—the insanity of self-conceit and the stolid refusal of 
intercourse with other nations. The overcoming of that 
reserve by force and the political and commercial encroach¬ 
ments of the Caucasian race will be treated in its proper 
place in modern history. 

If the state and the upper classes of China can be said 
to have any religion at all, it is Confucianism, a system of 
morality and philosophy which has little or nothing to do 
with a creed in the true sense. The lower classes believe 
to some extent in the religion called Buddhism, introduced 
from India in the First Century A. D. It is called in 
China the “religion of Fo,” another name for Buddha, and 
is a system of materialism which teaches the annihilation 
of man after death, mixed with gross idolatry and super¬ 
stition. There is also a sect devoted to the worship of 


H ANCIENT AND MEDIAEVAL HISTORY 


Lao-tsze. China has thus three religious faiths, of which 
two have degenerated into superstitions, while the 
third is simply a code of ethics. 

In China a patriarchal despotism is the system of rule. 
The laws of the state are partly civil ordinances and partly 
moral requirements reaching to the inner self of every 
citizen. The state is treated as virtually one great family, 
and the people regard themselves as children of the state. 
The whole development of the civil and social polity is a 
grotesque mixture of reason and absurdity. An exagger¬ 
ated filial reverence causes the merits of a son to be 
attributed to his dead father, and ancestors have titles of 
honor bestowed upon them for the good deeds of their 
posterity. The Emperor is supposed to direct the whole 
business of the state, for which end the Imperial Princes 
are educated on a strict system that has furnished China 
with a succession of pedantic Solomons. There is no 
proper nobility—official station, based entirely upon com¬ 
petitive examinations, being the only rank recognized out¬ 
side the Imperial family. The administration of the gov¬ 
ernment is exercised, under the Emperor, by the high 
officials called Mandarins, of two classes, learned (the civil 
officers) and military. The highest administrative body 
is the Council of the Empire, composed of the most learned 
and able men. There is a permanent board of Censors, 
who exercise a strict supervision in all matters of govern¬ 
ment and over the public and private conduct of the Man¬ 
darins, reporting thereon direct to the Emperor. The 
monarch is the center round which everything turns, and 
as the well-being of the state is made to depend on him, the 
succession of a slothful and unprincipled ruler is the signal 
for an all-pervading corruption. The officers of govern¬ 
ment are supposed to have no conscience or honor of their 
own to keep them to duty, but only external Mandates, 


CHINA 


r 5 


which, even with the highest officials, are enforced by the 
use of the stick. Every mandarin can inflict blows with 
the bamboo, and Ministers and Viceroys are punished in 
this way. At every turn, in a system in some points excel¬ 
lent, but the product of a prosaic understanding, without 
regard to sentiment, honor, or free-will, we are met in 
China by pedantic pettiness and degrading folly. 

In respect of civilization the Chinese have ever been a 
nation of ingenious and precocious children who have 
never succeeded in growing up. They are said to have 
known the art of making paper as early as the First Cen¬ 
tury A. D., and to have practiced printing from wooden 
blocks, which they still continue to do, as early as the 
Seventh or Eighth Century. They were famous at a very 
early period for the porcelain, which has made the name of 
their country a generic term for all such fine and beautiful 
earthenware. Their robes of woven silk were worn by 
the luxurious Roman ladies under the early Empire, and 
they have been long noted for their skill in lacquered ware 
and their delicacy of carving in wood, ivory, tortoise-shell, 
and mother-of-pearl. 

They profess to hold the sciences in great honor, and 
one of the highest governmental boards is the Academy of 
Sciences. What they call science, however, is merely a 
collection of ill-arranged facts and beliefs; it is pursued 
without regard to intellectual ends, and hindered in prog¬ 
ress to what is higher by a curious, cumbersome, and 
clumsy language. The Chinese tongue has never attained 
to the possession of an alphabet, which, with nations of the 
higher development, has always been the first step toward 
the acquirement of a rational instrument for the expres¬ 
sion of thought. Each Chinese character represents a 
word, and in writing and printing the characters are not 
arranged horizontally either from left to right as in Euro- 


16 ANCIENT AND MEDIAEVAL HISTORY 


pean languages, or from right to left as in Hebrew and the 
cognate languages, but in vertical columns, to be read 
from top to bottom. China’s want of scientific attain¬ 
ments in astronomy is attested by the fact that for hun¬ 
dreds of years the Chinese calendars have been made by 
Europeans; and in medicine, by the theory that the beating 
of the pulse alone can tell the physician the cause and 
locality of the disease. 

It is clear enough that Europe and true civilization 
had nothing to gain, and have gained nothing, in culture, 
from a country where 400 millions of people are treated 
like children; where there is no originality and no free¬ 
will; where no progress, save from outward impulse, is 
possible. The outcome of the elaborate and minute regu¬ 
lations, of the severe and constant competitive examina¬ 
tions, of the Chinese system is simply, that after the lapse 
of 4,000 years, they still have no convenient written 
language; that, pretending to be astronomers, they know 
not how to use the telescope; that the medical art is a mere 
ignorant superstition; and that the artist cannot shade a 
drawing, and has no notion of perspective. The super¬ 
ficial cleverness of handiwork displayed by Chinese artisans 
serves but to heighten the effect of the ludicrous produced 
on the European mind by the paltry results of a preten¬ 
tious, antiquated, and inherently unprogressive order of 
civilization. 

INDIA 

Indian civilization, like that of China, has contributed 
little or nothing to the culture of the Western world. 
From the prosaic pedantry of China, however, we pass, 
in India, to a region where fancy and sensibility have held 
sway, though the absence of energy, and of true human 
dignity and freedom, has prevented the people from 


INDIA 


l 7 


exhibiting historical progress of the highest order. Indian 
records present us with no political action; the people 
have achieved no foreign conquests, and have repeatedly 
succumbed to foreign invasion. They are a people of 
dreams, not of deeds. 

In regard to general history, India has been an object 
of desire to other nations from very early times, as a land 
teeming with riches and marvels; the treasures of nature, 
such as pearls, perfumes, diamonds, elephants, gold; and 
treasures of wisdom in her sacred books. Alexander the 
Great was the first European recorded to have arrived 
there by land; in modern times the European nations first 
made their way to India by sea round the Cape of Good 
Hope. The Hindoos are one of the two Aryan races of 
Asia, and probably crossed the Indus into the rich alluvial 
river-plain of the Ganges about 2,000 years B. C. They 
dispossessed the peoples, probably of Tartar origin, to the 
north of the River Nerbudda, and gradually penetrated 
the great southern peninsula known as the Deccan. The 
dark-skinned aboriginal natives were by no means exterm¬ 
inated, and their descendants, in the persons of the hill- 
tribes and others, amount to many millions. 

India first came into historical connection with Europe 
at the invasion of Alexander the Great in B. C. 327. The 
Macedonian conqueror did not go far beyond the Indus, 
and, after defeating a king named Porus, returned to Per¬ 
sia by way of the Indus and the sea. 

Early in the Tenth Century A. D. Mohammedan invas¬ 
ions of India, through Afghanistan, began, and early in 
the Thirteenth Century an Afghan dynasty was estab¬ 
lished at Delhi, and northern India was subdued. 

During the Thirteenth Century the Mongols of the 
Empire of Jenghis Khan invaded India and met with 
many successes and defeats. In 1398 the great Tartar 

VOT. 2 


IS ANCIENT AND MEDLEYAL HISTORY 


conqueror, Tamerlane, took and sacked Delhi, and, after 
overrunning the land to the mouths of the Ganges, retired 
and left anarchy and misery behind him. 

In 1526 Sultan Baber, a descendant of Tamerlane, 
founded the Mogul Empire in India. His grandson, 
Akbar, reigned from 1556 to 1607, and extended his power 
over most of the peninsula, being distinguished by his 
justice and his tolerance in matters of religion. Akbar’s 
son, Jehanghir, received in 1615 the English Ambassador, 
Sir Thomas Roe, despatched by James I; Jehanghir’s son, 
Shah Jehan, displayed great architectural magnificence, 
culminating in the exquisite Taj Mahal (“Crown of 
Empires”) at Agra, a mausoleum of white marble built 
for the remains of his favorite wife. During his reign, 
which ended in 1658, the Mahrattas began to be formidable 
in Southern India. The history of British presence in 
India begins at about this time, and the commercial con¬ 
nection of other European nations with the Hindoos will 
be noticed in its proper place. 

In India we see an essential advance, in theory, from 
the Chinese state of a dead-level of equality for all below 
the Emperors. In spite of the despotic power of the 
ruler are found also different ranks and orders of men. 
These distinctions are the Castes, established in accordance 
with religious doctrine, and viewed by the people, at last, 
as natural distinctions. The very ancient book of Hindoo 
laws, called the Institutes of Menu, regulates these class- 
divisions of society. In later tiroes many minute subdi¬ 
visions of caste have arisen, but there were originally four 
only: The Brahmins, the order of men devoted to religion 
and philosophy; the Shatryas, or military and governing 
class; the Vaisyas, or professional and mercantile class; 
the Sudras, or lower-class traders, artisans, and field- 
laborers. The rigid stereotyped character of these orders 


INDIA 


*9 


caused the people of India to be spiritual slaves. Into 
his caste a man was born, and bound to it for life, without 
regard to poverty or riches, talents, character, or skill. 
Thus life and energy were fettered; the individual could 
not make his own position. Nature had for ever settled 
it for him. Human dignity and human feeling were 
bound up in the separate castes, and so true expansive 
morality was unknown; the spirit of man wandered into 
the world of dreams, and political progress was impossible. 

Government in India, before its conquest by the Eng- 
lish, was nothing but the most arbitrary, wicked, and 
degrading despotism, unchecked by any rule of morality 
or religion—a condition worse than that of China under 
the worst of Emperors. The people were degraded even 
below a feeling of true resentment against oppression; 
much less were they capable of any manly attempt to 
throw off the yoke. 

The prevailing religions .of India are Brahminism, 
Mohammedanism, and Buddhism. More than two-thirds 
of the people are supposed to hold the Brahminical creed, 
more than one-fourth are Mohammedans, and the rest are 
mainly Buddhists, with a small fraction of Christians. 

Brahminism is the oldest religion, and its tenets are 
contained in the sacred books called Vedas, of which the 
oldest, the Rig-Veda, is certainly one of the most ancient 
literary documents in existence. The pure Deism of the 
older form of this religion had for its leading doctrine 
that of an all-pervading mind, from which the universe 
took its rise. Then came a belief in three deities, or diverse 
forms of the same universal deity, viz., Brahma, or the 
Creator; Vishnu, or the Preserver; and Siva, the 
Destroyer. This was further corrupted into a pantheism, 
which sees a god in everything—in sun, moon, stars, the 
Ganges, the Indus, beasts and flowers. In its higher 


so ANCIENT AND MEDIAEVAL HISTORY 

development, Brahminism holds that the human soul is of 
the same nature with the supreme being, and that its des¬ 
tiny is to be reunited with him. This led to the great doc¬ 
trine of metempsychosis, or transmigration of souls, which 
is necessary to purify the human soul for union with the 
divine. According to this view, man’s soul in this world 
is united to the body in a state of trial, which needs prayer, 
penance, sacrifice, and purification. If these are neglected, 
then the human soul, after death, is joined to the body of 
some lower animal, and begins a fresh course of probation. 
In popular practice, the grossest idolatry and superstition, 
with a cowardly and selfish disregard of human life, have 
largely prevailed alongside of the philosophical tenets of 
the educated class. Mohammedanism was introduced by 
conquering armies of Islam’s prophets early in the Tenth 
Century A. D. 

Buddhism arose about 550 B. C., and derives its name 
from Buddha, or the Buddha (“the enlightened one”), a 
surname bestowed upon its founder Gautama, a Hindoo of 
high rank, who developed his creed in retired meditation, 
and began to teach it in opposition to Brahminism. This 
religion recognizes no supreme being; it insists on prac¬ 
tical morality; teaches the transmigration of souls, and 
regards annihilation as the good man’s final reward. 

The Sanskrit tongue was spoken by the ancient Hin¬ 
doos, but has been in disuse, save as a literary language, for 
over 2,000 years. From it most of the numerous Hindoo 
dialects are derived. Its condition is a testimony to the high 
intelligence of the Aryans who peopled India. The name of 
this elder sister of the Greek, Latin, Persian, Slavonic, 
Teutonic, and Celtic tongues is derived from sam, “with,” 
and krita, “made,” meaning “carefully constructed” or 
“symmetrically formed.” It is rich in inflectional forms 
and very flexible, and it has a boundless wealth of epithets. 
The alphabet is a very perfect instrument for representing 


INDIA 


2! 


the sounds of the language. A vast religious, poetical, 
philosophical, and scientific literature is written in 
Sanskrit. 

The Hindoos, at the time of Alexander’s invasion, had 
reached a high point of development. They were good 
astronomers and mathematicians; had great skill in logic 
and philosophy; manufactured silk and cotton in beauti¬ 
ful and costly forms, and worked rich ornaments in gold 
and silver. The chief artistic works of India have been 
architectural. Many splendid buildings are scattered over 
the country, displaying a variety of styles in which the 
pyramidal form is very prevalent, a profusion of sculptured 
ornamentation being also a marked feature. Remarkable 
works of a somewhat different kind are the rock temples 
of Ellora in the Deccan, near Aurungabad, and of Ele- 
phanta, a small island near Bombay. These stupenduous 
and magnificent works have massive pillars and display 
very rich and elaborate carving. 

The Phoenicians were probably the first of the nations 
dwelling round the Mediterranean to enter into commer¬ 
cial relations with India, the trade being carried on both 
by sea and land. In later times some of the products of 
India were also known to the Greeks, while among the 
Romans they were not uncommon, and fetched very high 
prices. 

As illustrating the character of the Hindoo intellect it 
is remarkable that their literature possesses no historical 
works. Their minds seem to have been unable to regard 
events in their true light, and they have had no love of 
veracity to induce them to record facts as they occurred. 
The Hindoos exhibit a state of mind in which a sensitive 
and imaginative temperament turns all outside them into a 
feverish dream, and so, with all their intelligence and taste, 
they have had slight influence upon the progress of other 
nations. 


GREAT ORIENTAL PEOPLES 


\ 


The old Eastern monarchies, with the sole exception of 
Hamitic Egypt, all arose in Asia. The truly historical 
nations of olden Asia are the Assyrians, Semitic; Babylon¬ 
ians, Semitic; Hebrews, Semitic; Phoenicians, Semitic, 
and Persians, Aryan. All these had their career in South¬ 
western Asia. This great area of early history may be 
divided into three regions: That west of the Euphrates; 
the valleys of the Euphrates and the Tigris; the region 
from the Zagros Mountains, east of the Tigris, to the 
Indus. 

West of the Euphrates were the peninsula of Asia 
Minor, containing the important Lydian nation and Greek 
colonies connected with the later Oriental history; Syria, 
on the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea, divided 
into three distinct parts—Syria proper; Phoenicia, or the 
strip of coast between Mount Lebanon and the sea; and 
Palestine, south of Phoenicia; the peninsula of Arabia, 
extending southeastward, and having little to do with 
ancient history. 

In the basin of the Tigris and the Euphrates were 
several distinct territories: Armenia, or the mountainous 
region between Asia Minor and the Caspian Sea; Assyria 
proper, lying between the Tigris and the Zagros Moun¬ 
tains; Babylonia, the great alluvial plain between the lower 
courses of the Tigris and of the Euphrates, and extending 
westward to the Syrian Desert; Chaldsea (in the nar¬ 
rower sense, as a province of the Babylonian Empire), 
west of the Euphrates, at the head of the Persian Gulf; 
Mesopotamia, or the district between the middle courses of 

22 


GREAT ORIENTAL PEOPLES 


2 3 


the Tigris and the Euphrates; Susiana, the country east 
of the Tigris and at the head of the Persian Gulf. 

In these territories, the valleys of the Tigris and the 
Euphrates, arose the three great monarchies of Chaldaea, 
Assyria, and Babylonia, afterward absorbed in the Sixth 
Century B. C., by the mighty Empire of Persia, extending 
almost from the Indus to the Mediterranean, ZEgean, 
Euxine, and Caspian Seas, when it had reached the summit 
of its power. 

East of the Zagros Mountains lay Media and Persia 
proper—Media, northeastward, towards the Caspian Sea, 
and Persia, on the table-land southward, stretching to the 
Persian Gulf. 

Before the rise of an extensive commerce by sea or 
land, it is possible for great communities to gather and 
continue to exist only in those regions where a rich soil 
provides plenteous food. No soils exceed in fertility the 
alluvial deposits of great rivers, and among such soils the 
valleys of the Nile and of the Tigris and Euphrates have 
ever been famous for their wonderful productive power. 
Nature herself provides man with that delicious and most 
nutritious food the date, and as for rice and other grain 
crops, the earth has fatness such that “if she be but tickled 
with a hoe, she laughs with a harvest.” In pastoral lands 
the people wander, and must wander, with their flocks and 
herds, to find fresh grass; they cannot settle down into a 
polity or state; the agriculturists, who stayed to reap where 
they had sown the seed, became progenitors of mighty 
nations, founders of great empires famous through all 
regions and all ages of the civilized world. 

Here then, in such a territory, on such a soil—here, in 
Egypt, and in Southwestern Asia, the true history of the 
civilized world begins, with those nations that had historic 
records of their own, that rose to a highly-civilized con- 


24 


ANCIENT AND MEDIAEVAL HISTORY 


dition; and, more than all, that brought their culture, with 
more or less of permanent effect, to bear on nations whom 
they conquered, or who subjugated them. As it comes 
forth from the gloom of a past before all records, we turn 
our gaze to greet the rising sun of history, disclosing to 
our view two grand developments of human culture— 
Egypt and Chaldaea. 

EGYPT 

The people of Egypt are one of the earliest nations 
of whose government and institutions we possess any cer¬ 
tain record, their only rivals being the Chaldeans and 
possibly the Hittites, a nation but recently discovered. 
Long before the Hebrews came into possession of 
their promised land Canaan, Egypt had Kings, and 
priests, and cities, and armies; laws and ritual and 
learning; arts and sciences and books. Egypt is at this 
day, beyond all other lands, the land of ruins, surpassing 
all other countries in gigantic and stately monumental re¬ 
mains, the result of boundless human labor. In these great 
memorials of Egypt we have expressed for us the char¬ 
acter of the people, a half-fettered spirit, whose favorite 
symbol was the Sphinx—a half-brute, half-human form. 
This human head looking out from the brute typifies the 
intellectual and moral part of man—the human spirit—• 
beginning to emerge from the natural, striving to get loose 
and to look freely around, but still restrained by the de* 
based original state of existence. The edifices of the 
strange people who dwelt of old in this land of wonders 
are, as it were, half under and half above the ground, so 
that the kingdom of life seems ever in contact with the 
silent realm of death. 

Egypt is a land that has been created out of the desert 
by the alluvial deposits of her mighty river, the Nile. 


EGYPT 


25 


Flowing down from the mountains of Abyssinia in its 
eastern branch, the Blue Nile, it unites at Khartoom, in 
Nubia, with the western and longer branch, or White Nile, 
w T hich is now known to issue from the great equatorial 
lake, Victoria Nyanza. The river then flows, northward 
mainly, to the Mediterranean, and provides a rich soil of 
muddy deposit in the yearly overflow caused by the great 
rainfalls of the Abyssinian mountains. Egypt is thus 
composed of a highly fertile strip of territory inclosed by 
hills and sandy wastes on each side. The Delta of the 
Nile was ever noted for its rich soil and teeming popula¬ 
tion; the water of the river was always famous for its 
wholesomeness and pleasant taste. 

The chief mineral products of Egypt were the beauti¬ 
ful granite of Philae, Elephantine and Syene, whose quar¬ 
ries furnished the huge masses used for obelisks and 
statues; the whitish or grayish sandstone of the hills north 
of Syene, which supplied the masonry for the temples; and 
the limestone of the hills northward again to the Delta, 
which last chain furnished the material for the Pyramids. 
The climate of Egypt is remarkably dry, and to this is due 
the wonderful state of preservation seen in many of the 
monumental remains, which display a sharpness of outline 
in the stone and a freshness of color in the painting that 
aredike the work of yesterday. The vegetable products of 
Egypt, due in their great abundance to a hot sun acting on 
the thick fertile layer of fresh soil yearly bestowed by the 
river, were varied beyond all example in the ancient 
world. The olive and pomegranate, the orange and the 
vine, the citron, the date-palm and the fig, all yielded their 
delicious produce for the use of man. The vegetable gar¬ 
dens teemed with cabbages and cucumbers, onions, leeks, 
garlic, radishes, and melons. Rice and a species of millet 
called doora grew in great crops. The fir, the cypress, and 


26 ANCIENT AND MEDIAEVAL HISTORY 


the cedar furnished valuable timber. The papyrus of the 
marshes by the river gave the material for writing which 
we call, in a different substance ,“paper.” The same plant 
furnished sailcloth, cordage, and baskets. Cotton and flax 
gave raw material for manufacturing skill. Medical 
science went to Egypt for its drugs, and in her later days 
Rome was largely fed by Egypt’s corn. 

To the abundant food was due the plenteous popula¬ 
tion, and to that again the mighty architectural works 
raised by the toilsome efforts of cheap and well-fed labor. 
The country abounded, too, in animals and birds. Sheep, 
goats, and oxen swarmed; geese and ducks, and quails 
and widgeons flew in countless numbers. Egypt was 
famous for the horse as used in war in early times; the 
scaraboeus, or sacred beetle, is known to all from its 
sculptured semblance on the monuments; and the white 
ibis, among birds, migrating into Egypt along with the ris¬ 
ing of the Nile, became sacred in the eyes of those to whom 
the rising river gave their bountiful subsistence. Rain 
scarcely ever falls in Lower Egypt, or in the part nearer 
to the Mediterranean Sea. The inundation of the Nile 
begins early in August, turning the valley of the river into 
a shallow inland sea, and subsides by the end of October. 

Until the present Century, what was known about 
ancient Egypt was mainly got from the narrative of 
Herodotus, the great Greek, the father of history, who 
traveled in Egypt about the middle of the Fifth Century 

B. C., and made careful inquiries of the people and the 
priests; from Manetho, an Egyptian priest about 300 B. 

C. , who wrote in Greek a lost work on the history of 
Egypt, of which the lists of dynasties of kings have been 
preserved by other writers; and from Diodorus Siculus, 
who wrote (in the time of Julius Caesar and Augustus) a 
universal history, of which the portion about Egypt 


EGYPT 


27 


remains entire. During the present Century knowledge 
of the history of the “land of Pyramids and priests” has 
been greatly increased by the deciphering of the inscrip¬ 
tions on the monuments, and by extended observation of 
the countless sculptures in which the olden Egyptians have 
recorded their ways of life, their arts and arms and sciences 
and ritual and faith. In carving or in painting, or in both 
combined, the obelisks, the temple walls and temple col¬ 
umns, the inner walls of tombs, the coffins of the dead, 
utensils, implements, artistic objects, all are covered with 
the strange characters known as hieroglyphics. This 
word, of Greek extraction, means “sacred carvings,” and 
the name was given to the sculptures in the supposition that 
all such characters were of religious import, and known 
only to the priests of ancient Egypt. The meaning of the 
characters had been utterly lost for many hundreds of 
years, and the word “hieroglyphics” had long become 
proverbial for mysteries and undecipherable puzzles, when 
a keen-eyed Frenchman found and put into the hands of 
scholars the clue that was to guide them within the 
labyrinth for ages inaccessible and unexplored. An 
artillery officer of Napoleon’s army in Egypt, named 
Bouchart, discovered near Rosetta, in 1799, an oblong 
slab of stone engraved with three inscriptions, one under 
the other. The upper one (half of which was broken off) 
was in hieroglyphics, the lower one was in Greek, and the 
middle one was stated in the Greek to be in enchorial char¬ 
acters (i. e., characters of the country, Gr. chora, country), 
otherwise called demotic or popular (from the Greek, 
demos, the people). The victories of the British army 
in Egypt put the English government in possession of 
this celebrated and interesting relic, which George III pre¬ 
sented to the British Museum, where it stands now in the 
gallery of Egyptian sculpture. 


23 ANCIENT AND MEDIEVAL HISTORY 


The Greek inscription at once told scholars that all 
three inscriptions expressed a decree of the Egyptian 
priests, sitting in synod at Memphis, in honor of King 
Ptolemy V (Ptolemy Epiphanes, who reigned B. C. 
205-181), to commemorate benefits conferred by him upon 
them. To the efforts of two men chiefly the world was 
indebted for the deciphering of the two forms of Egyptian 
writing found on the Rosetta stone. These were Dr. 
Thomas Young, an eminent linguist and natural philoso¬ 
pher, who was foreign secretary to the Royal Society, 
dying in 1829; and the great French orientalist, Jean 
Francois Champollion, superintendent of Egyptian an¬ 
tiquities in the Louvre Museum, and member of the 
Academy of Inscriptions. M. Champollion died in 
1832. By careful study and comparison, firstly of the 
Greek with the enchorial inscription, and then of both with 
the hieroglyphic characters, combined with the study of 
similar inscriptions on other monuments, a key to the 
mystery was at last obtained, and a flood of light thrown 
on the olden history and civilization of Egypt. Their 
work has been continued by the Egyptian Exploration 
fund established in 1881, under whose direction Petrie, 
Naville and others have discovered ancient Egyptian cities 
buried under the earth but which, excavated, confirmed the 
tales told by the hieroglyphics and have added new and 
interesting details to the world’s knowledge of the won¬ 
derful civilization of the extinct race. Hieroglyphics 
are representations of objects or parts of objects, 
including heavenly bodies, human beings in various atti¬ 
tudes, parts of the human body, quadrupeds and parts of 
quadrupeds, birds and parts of birds, fishes, reptiles and 
parts of reptiles, insects, plants and parts of plants, build¬ 
ings, furniture, dresses and parts of dresses, weapons, 
tools and instruments, vases and cups, geometric forms, 


EGYPT 


29 


and fantastic forms, amounting in all to about a thousand 
different symbols. Of these more than six hundred are 
ideographic (idea-writing), i. e., the engraved or painted 
figure, either directly or metaphorically, conveys an idea 
which we express by a word composed of alphabetic signs. 
Thus, directly, the figure of a man means “man;” meta¬ 
phorically, the figure of a man means “power.” About 
one hundred and thirty of the hieroglyphs are phonetic 
(sound-conveying), i. e., the engraved or painted figures 
represent words (which are nothing but sound with a 
meaning attached thereto), of which the first letter is to 
be taken as an alphabetic sign, and thus phonetic hiero¬ 
glyphics answer the same end as our letters of the alphabet. 
An example of each will clearly show what is meant. In 
ideographic writing, a bird, a mason, a nest, mean “birds 
build nests;” in phonetic hieroglyphs the figures of a bull, 
imp, rope, door, and ship would give the word “birds,” 
and the words “build” and “nests” would be expressed in 
the same roundabout and clumsy fashion. The difficulty 
of deciphering the inscriptions on monuments was 
increased by the fact that both ideographic and phonetic 
hieroglyphs, along with certain mixed signs, or phonetic 
followed by ideographic, occur in the same inscriptions. 

The first inhabitants of Egypt came from the north 
by the Isthmus of Suez, and not from the South, descend¬ 
ing the Nile, as was supposed until recently. They 
belonged to the race known in Genesis as the Sons of I him, 
whom the Arabs called the “red.” Temples have been dis¬ 
covered built 1600 B. C., upon the ruins of buildings ^ti\\ 
more ancient. Egyptian chronology is not yet fixed with 
certainty, but the dates given by Mariette Bey, founder of 
the Museum of Boulak at Cairo, may be accepted. Under 
the name of Cushites, the Hamitic race constituted \hc 
basis of the population along the shores of the Ind*^1 


'30 ANCIENT AND MEDIEVAL HISTORY 

Ocean, Persian Gulf and Red Sea. These Cushites formed 
little states, which existed for many centuries, before the 
powerful chief, Menes, made himself master of all the val¬ 
ley from the sea to the cataracts of Syene, and founded, 
at least 5000 B. C., the first royal race of which we have 
any knowledge. Tradition is that at first gods reigned, 
and then demi-gods, represented by priests, but these were 
forced to yield to a warrior chief. Little has yet been dis¬ 
covered of these three first dynasties, the rule of which for 
eight centuries extended as far as to the peninsula of 
Sinai. But it is known that under the fourth dynasty, 
which began about 4020 B. C, there existed a civilization 
unparalleled at the period. The arts gained a development 
which is scarcely excelled by the most brilliant epoch. The 
building of the Great Pyramid at Gizeh, near Cairo, is 
ascribed by Herodotus to King Cheops, otherwise called 
Suphis, according to the hieroglyphic royal name found 
inside the structure. This early King is believed to 
have reigned about the middle of the Twenty-fifth 
Century B. C. Cheops was the second and most 
celebrated monarch in the fourth of the dynasties 
of Manetho, which ruled at Memphis as the capital. 
The third King in this list, Cephren, also founded 
a pyramid, as did the fourth, Mencheres, a sovereign 
beloved and praised in poetry for his goodness. His 
mummified remains are now in the British Museum. In 
the sixth dynasty was a female sovereign noted for her 
beauty, named Nitocris, who also built a pyramid and 
reigned at Memphis. The monarchy appears to have been 
for some time divided, the chief power being held by the 
Kings ruling at Thebes, in Upper Egypt. To about 2050 
B. C. is ascribed the invasion and conquest of the country 
by the ITyksos or Shepherd-Kings, said to be the Hittites. 
They conquered Lower Egypt first, and then subdued the 


EGYPT 


3 * 


kingdom of Thebes, ruling the whole land, as is supposed, 
from about B. C. 1900 to 1500. It is probably to this 
period that the story of Joseph belongs. Amenophis seems 
to have expelled the Shepherd-Kings, with the aid of the 
Ethiopians from the South, and then came the great period 
of Egyptian history, from about 1500 to 1200 B. C. Dur¬ 
ing this time Egypt was a great empire, having Thebes 
for its capital. 

The greatest monarch of this or perhaps any age of 
Egypt's history was Rameses the Great, called by the Greek 
writers, Sesostris. To him have been attributed many of 
the monuments and pictures which represent triumphal 
procession and the captives taken in war. Rameses the 
Great reigned for nearly seventy years in the Fourteenth 
Century B.C. Among his many monuments two are chiefly 
remarkable, the Memnonium or palace-temple at Thebes, 
and the great rock-cut temple of Aboosimbel in Nubia. 
These great architectural works possess an interest more 
historical than that of the pyramids. Their sculptures and 
inscriptions tell us the chief events of the reign of Rameses, 
and even suggest some idea of his personality. His por¬ 
traits show a face of partly Semitic type, and indicate a 
strong but gentle character of unusual cultivation for the 
times. This great conqueror is said to have subdued 
Ethiopia, to have carried his arms beyond the Euphrates 
eastward, and among the Thracians in southeast Europe. 
The monumental sculptures and paintings tell us of war- 
galleys of Egypt in the Indian seas, and of Ethiopian trib¬ 
ute paid in ebony and ivory and gold, in apes and birds of 
prey, and even in giraffes from inner Africa. Other sculp¬ 
tures display the Egyptians fighting with success against 
Asiatic foes. To this monarch was due a vast system of 
irrigation by canals, dug through the whole of Egypt 
for conveying the waters of the Nile to every part- After 


32 ANCIENT AND MEDIEVAL HISTORY 

the great Rameses we find no sovereign of note until we 
come to Shishak, who, in the year B. C. 970, took and 
plundered Jerusalem. The empire continued to decline, 
and latterly it was attacked by Sennacherib, King of 
Assyria, who, however, accomplished little. By Esarhad- 
don and Assurbanipal, however, Egypt was entirely 
reduced, and became for a time tributary to the Assyrian 
monarchs. This was in the early part of the reign of a 
King named Psammetichus, who reigned from B. C. 671 
to 617. 

Then Egypt was in connection, for the first time in 
her history, with foreign countries, otherwise than as con¬ 
quering or conquered. Psammetichus had in his pay a 
body of Greek mercenaries, and sought to introduce the 
Greek language among his subjects. In jealousy at this, 
the great military caste of Egypt emigrated into Ethiopia, 
and left the King dependent on his foreign troops, with 
whom he warred in Syria and Phoenicia. Egyptian policy 
at this time, and in succeeding reigns, seems to have aimed 
at the development of commerce, and the securing for 
Egypt of the routes and commercial centers for the trade, 
by the Red Sea, between Europe and Asia. Necho, son of 
Psammetichus, succeeded his father, and reigned from 
B. C. 617 to 601. He was an energetic, enterprising 
prince, who built fleets on the Red Sea and the Mediter¬ 
ranean, and strove to join the Nile, by a canal, with the 
Red Sea. Africa was circumnavigated by Phoenicians in 
his service, who sailed from the Arabian Gulf, and passed 
round by the Straits of Gibraltar to the mouths of the Nile. 
He was the King who fought with and defeated Josiah, 
King of Judah, sustaining afterwards defeat from Neb¬ 
uchadnezzar, King of Babylon. 

In B. C. 594 came Apries, the Pharaoh-Hophra of 
Scripture, who conquered Sidon, and was an ally of Zede- 


EGYPT 


33 


kiah, King of Judah, against Nebuchadnezzar. After 
being repulsed with severe loss in an attack on the Greek 
colony of Cyrene, west of Egypt, Apries was dethroned 
by Amasis, who reigned from B. C. 570 to 526. His long 
and prosperous rule was marked by a closer intercourse 
than heretofore with the Greeks. 

Psammenitus, son of Amasis, inherited a quarrel of 
his father with Cambyses, King of Persia, who invaded 
and conquered Egypt in B. C. 525. For nearly two hun¬ 
dred years afterward the history of Egypt is marked, 
disastrously, by constant struggles between the people and 
their Persian conquerors, and, in a more favorable and 
interesting way, by the growing intercourse between the 
land of the Nile and the Greeks. Greek historians and 
philosophers—Herodotus and Anaxagoras and Plato— 
visited the country and took back stores of information on 
its wonders, its culture, and its faith. 

In B. C. 332 Egypt was conquered by Alexander the 
Great, and with this event, and the foundation of the new 
capital, the great city of Alexandria, destined to a lasting 
literary and commercial renown, the history of ancient 
Egypt may end. 

At an early period the form of government in Egypt 
became a hereditary monarchy, but one of a peculiar kind. 
The power of the King was restricted by rigid law and 
antique custom, and by the extraordinary influence of the 
priestly class. In his personal life he was bound by minute 
regulations as to diet, dress, hours of business, of repose, 
'and of religious worship, and submitted to a daily lecture 
from the sacred books as to the duties of his high office. 
Under the Kings, governors of the thirty-six nomes or dis¬ 
tricts held sway, and these high officials were invested with 
large powers over the land and the levying of taxes. The 
soil was held by the priests, the warriors, and the King. 


34 ANCIENT AND MEDIAEVAL HISTORY 

The Egyptian monarchs appear, as a rule, to have 
used their authority well and wisely; there was sel¬ 
dom insurrection or rebellion, and many received 
divine honors after death for their beneficence and 
regal virtues. The common title, “Pharaoh,” is de¬ 
rived from the Egyptian word “Phra,” the sun. The 
body of the people was divided into castes, concern¬ 
ing the number and nature of which the accounts 
differ. It seems, however, that they were not rigidly sep¬ 
arated, as in India, and that the members of the different 
orders might intermarry, and the children pass from one 
caste to another by change of their hereditary occupation. 
The castes are, perhaps, most correctly given thus: 1st, 
priests; 2nd, soldiers; 3rd, husbandmen; 4th, artificers and 
tradesmen; 5th, a miscellaneous class of herdsmen, fisher¬ 
men, and servants. The priests and warriors ranked far 
above the rest in dignity and privilege. The hierarchy 
was the highest order in power, influence, and wealth. To 
the priestly caste, however, many persons belonged who 
were not engaged in religious offices. They were a land¬ 
owning class, and they were, emphatically and solely, the 
learned class, like the clergy of the Middle Ages. In their 
possession were all the literature and science of the coun¬ 
try, and all employments dependent, for their practice, on 
that knowledge. The priesthood thus included the poets, 
the historians, the expounders and administrators of law, 
the physicians, and the magicians who did wonders before 
Moses. They paid no taxes, had large landed possessions, 
exercised immense influence over the minds of the people, 
and put no slight check even on the King. History dis¬ 
closes a powerful and excellent military organization in 
Egypt. An army of over 400,000 men was mainly com¬ 
posed of a militia supported by a flxed portion of land (six 
acres per man), free from all taxation. The chariots and 


EGYPT 


35 


horses of Egypt were famous; the foot-soldiers were vari¬ 
ously armed with helmet, spear, coat of mail, shield, battle- 
axe, club, javelin, and dagger, for dose fighting in dense 
array; and with bows, arrows and slings for skirmishing 
and conflict in open order. The soldier was allowed to 
cultivate his own land when he was not under arms, but 
could follow no other occupation. The castes below the 
warriors and priests had no political rights, and could not 
hold land. The husbandmen who tilled the soil paid rent 
in produce to the King or to the priests who owned it. The 
artisan-class included masons, weavers, sculptors, painters, 
embalmers of the dead, and workers in leather, wood, and 
metals, whose occupations are recorded upon the monu¬ 
ments. The herdsmen were the lowest class, and of these 
the swineherds were treated as mere outcasts, not per¬ 
mitted to enter the temples, or to marry except among 
themselves. 

The land of Egypt, teeming with population, abounded 
in cities and towns. Of these the greatest were Thebes, in 
Upper Egypt, and Memphis, in Middle Egypt, whose site 
was near the modern Cairo. Thebes is the No or No Am¬ 
mon of Scripture, and was at the height of its splendor 
as capital of Egypt about B. C. 2000. Its vastness is 
proved by the existing remains known (from the names 
of modern villages) as the ruins of Karnak, Luxor, etc. 
They consist of obelisks, sphinxes, colossal statues, tem¬ 
ples, and tombs cut in the rock. These mighty monu¬ 
ments, with their countless sculptured details and inscrip¬ 
tions, are themselves the historians of the Egyptian Em¬ 
pire of 3,000 years ago. Memphis, after the fall of 
Thebes, became the capital of Egypt, and kept its impor¬ 
tance till the conquest of the country by Cambyses. It was 
superseded as capital by Alexandria, and finally destroyed 
by the Arabs in the Seventh Century A. D. The desert 


36 ANCIENT AND MEDIAEVAL HISTORY 

/ ' 

sands have overwhelmed its famous avenue of sphinxes, 
and the great pyramids of Gizeh, and the colossal Sphinx, 
are the chief memorials of the past in its vicinity. 

The chief feature of Egyptian architecture is its colos¬ 
sal, massive grandeur, derived from the use of enormous 
blocks of masonry, and from the vast extent of the build¬ 
ings in which these blocks were employed. Towering 
height and huge circumference in the pillars; length and 
loftiness in the colonnades, and avenues, and halls, produce 
in the beholder an unequaled impression of sublimity and 
awe. The approaches to the palaces and temples were 
paved roads lined with obelisks and sphinxes, and the tem¬ 
ples and the palaces themselves surpassed in size and in 
elaborate ornament of sculpture and of painting all other 
works of man. There are about forty pyramids now left 
standing, all in Middle Egypt, and of these the most 
remarkable are the group of nine at Gizeh, near the site 
of ancient Memphis. The Great Pyramid, that of King 
Cheops, covers an area of more than twelve acres, and 
exceeds 450 feet in height. An outer casing of small 
stones has been removed, and, instead of showing a smooth 
and sloping surface, the sides have now a series of huge 
steps. A narrow passage, fifty feet above the base of the 
structure on its north face, leads to the sepulchral cham¬ 
bers, of which that called the King’s chamber is lined with 
polished red granite. The wooden coffin with the King’s 
mummy was long since removed from the red granite sar¬ 
cophagus which held it. The second large pyramid, that 
of King Cephren, is somewhat smaller. A third, that of 
Mycerinus, is far smaller than the other two. The 
removal of the vast blocks of stone from distant quarries, 
and their elevation to heights which have puzzled the heads 
of modern engineers, were effected not by the ingenuity 
of mechanical contrivance, but by the labor of human 


EGYPT 


37 


hands. Thousands of men, employed for months in mov¬ 
ing single stones, regardless of expense, might well effect 
results startling to modern ideas of economy in toil. 

Egyptian sculpture displays size, simplicity, stiffness, 
and little of what modern art calls taste or beauty. Statues 
are made either standing quite upright, or kneeling on 
both knees, or sitting with a rigid posture of the legs and 
arms. In the work of the tombs and temples a bolder and 
more varied style is often found. The work is remarkable 
for clean execution and fineness of surface, showing an 
excellent edge and temper in the tools employed. It is 
likely that improvement in the forms of Egyptian art was 
hindered by religious scruple, confining the artist to the 
limits of traditional example. In Egypt, life was the thing 
sacred. Hence all that had life was in a way divine; the 
sacred ibis, crocodile, bull, cat, snake. All that produced 
and all that ended life. Hence death, too, was sacred. The 
Egyptian lived in the contemplation of death. His coffin 
was made in his lifetime; his ancestors were embalmed; 
the sacred animals were preserved in myriad heaps, 
through generations in mummy-pits. The sovereign’s 
tomb was built to last for, not centuries, but thousands 
of years. 

Hegel declares that in the religion of Egypt are united 
the worship of Nature and of the spirit which underlies 
and animates Nature. The physical existence of the 
Egyptians depended on the Nile and the Sun; from those 
forces only could come the vegetation needed for the food 
of the people. This view of nature gives the principle 
of the religion, in which the Nile and the Sun are deities 
conceived under human forms. From the observation of 
the constant course of nature, on which the Egyptian 
rested as his sole hope for the bread of life, arose the myth¬ 
ology of Egypt. In the winter-solstice the power of the 


3 S ANCIENT AND MEDI/EVAL HISTORY 

sun has reached its minimum, and must be born anew. 
And so, according to the legend, the god Osiris, represent¬ 
ing both the Nile and the Sun, is born; but he is killed by 
Typhon, the burning wind of the desert, which parches up 
the waters of the Nile. Isis, the goddess representing the 
Earth, or the receptive fertility of Nature, from whom the 
aid of the Sun and of the Nile has been withdrawn, yearns 
after the dead Osiris, gathers his scattered bones, and with 
all Egypt bewails his loss. Osiris becomes judge of the 
dead, and lord of the kingdom of spirits. To Osiris and 
to Isis were ascribed the introduction of agriculture, the 
invention of the plough and the hoe, because Osiris—the 
Nile and the Sun—not only makes earth fertile, but gives 
the means to turn its power of reproduction to account. 
He also gives men laws, and civil order, and religious rit¬ 
ual; he thus places in men’s hands the means of labor, 
and secures its result. Isis and Osiris were the only divini¬ 
ties that were worshipped throughout Egypt. It was in 
later times that they came to be regarded as divinities of 
the sun and the moon. Another god, Anubis, worshipped 
in the form of a human being with the head of a dog, is 
represented as an Egyptian Hermes, and to him was 
ascribed the invention of writing, grammar, astronomy, 
mensuration, music, and medicine. The highest form of 
the religious belief of this strange people appears, beyond 
a doubt, to have included the idea that the soul of man 
is immortal. 

Whatever higher religious ideas may have been held 
by philosophical and learned priests, the worship of the 
common people was chiefly a zoolatry, or adoration of ani¬ 
mals. The sacred bull, called Apis, was worshipped at 
Memphis with the highest honors, and at his death was 
replaced by another, searched for until they found one 
with certain peculiar marks, and this was then pretended 


EGYPT 


39 


to be miraculously born as the successor. All Egypt 
rejoiced on his annual birthday festival, and there was a 
public mourning when he died. The dog, the hawk, the 
white ibis, and the cat were also specially revered. The 
sparrow-hawk, with human head and outspread wings, 
denoted the soul flying through space, to animate a new 
body. Thus in the religion of Egypt, gross superstition 
in the masses of the people was mingled with the spiritual 
conceptions of cultivated minds. 

A papyrus-book discovered in the royal tombs of 
Thebes has revealed to the world some curious matter con¬ 
cerning the funeral ceremonies of the Egyptians, and their 
belief, as expressed in those rites, as to a future life. In 
this book, called the Book of the Dead, we read in pictured 
writing of a second life, and of a Hall of Judgment, where 
the god Osiris sits, provided with a balance, a secretary 
and forty-two attendant-judges. In the balance a soul 
is weighed against a statue of divine justice, placed in the 
other scale, which is guarded by the god Anubis. The 
assistant-judges give separate decisions, after the person 
on trial has pleaded his cause before them. The soul 
rejected as unworthy of the Egyptian heaven was believed 
to be driven off to some dark realm, to assume the form of 
a beast, in accordance with a low character and sensual 
nature. An acquitted soul joined the throng of the blest. 

With the religion of the people, it is thought, was 
connected the practice of embalming the bodies of the 
dead. This was performed by the use of drugs and spices 
stuffed within the head, and by the baking of the body, 
followed by steeping for seventy days in a solution of salt¬ 
peter. It was then closely wrapped in linen bandages 
soaked in resinous and aromatic substances. The next 
thing was to place the swathed form in the mummy-case, 
which was then laid in a sarcophagus of stone or in a 


40 


ANCIENT AND MEDIEVAL HISTORY 


coffin made of sycamore-wood. If the origin of this prac¬ 
tice was not a belief that at some period after death the 
soul would rejoin the body, it may have been occasioned 
by the fact that the yearly inundation made burial impos¬ 
sible for weeks over so large a portion of the land. 

As the Egyptian columns were formed by their arch¬ 
itects on the model of the palm-tree, whose feathery crown 
of foliage was ever before their eyes, or of the full-blown 
or budding papyrus, so in the mural decorations the figure 
of the famous lotus-plant, or lily of the Nile, is found con¬ 
stantly. The lotus was beheld by the Egyptians with 
veneration, and was used in sculpture and in paintings 
as no mere ornament, but as a religious symbol. It occur: 
in all representations of sacrifices and other holy ceremon¬ 
ies, in tombs, and in all matters connected either with death 
or with another life. This water-lily of Egypt was the 
emblem to the people of the generative powers of the 
world. It was consecrated to Isis and Osiris, and typefied 
the creation of the world from water. It also symbolized 
the rise of the Nile, and the return of the sun in his full 
power. The lotus of Egypt must not be confounded with 
that of the fabled “lotus-eaters,” which was probably the 
shrub called jujube, growing still in Tunis, Tripoli, and 
Morocco. 

Their monuments prove that the Egyptians practiced 
the arts of the potter, glass-blower, carpenter, boat-build¬ 
er, and other mechanics; that they used balances, levers, 
saws, adzes, chisels, the forceps, syringes, and razors. 
They were adepts at gold-beating, engraving, inlaying, 
casting, and wire-drawing. They grew and prepared flax, 
which they wove into fine linen. The sailcloth of the boats 
on the Nile was often worked in colored and embroidered 
patterns. Bells, crucibles, and surgical instruments were 
all in use. From the papyrus the Egyptians made excel- 






. 





’ 
























HERODOTUS 







EGYPT 


4 1 


lent paper, and the present freshness of the writing on it 
proves their skill in the preparation of colors and inks. 
They could dye cloth in fast hues, and engrave precious 
stones with great delicacy. They were skilled in veneering 
and inlaying with ivory and precious woods. There is thus 
ample proof that the ancient Egyptians were a highly in¬ 
genious, artistic, tasteful and industrious race. The women 
adorned themselves with bracelets, anklets, armlets, finger- 
rings, ear-rings, and necklaces; they always wore their 
own hair, which it was the fashion to have long and 
braided; the service of the toilet brought into use highly- 
polished bronze mirrors, large wooden combs, perfumes, 
and cosmetics, which included a preparation for staining 
the eyelids and the eyebrows. The women joined the men 
at dinner, where all guests sat, instead of reclining in the 
usual Eastern fashion; and at the meal the wine was cooled 
in jars and handed round in cups of bronze, or porcelain, 
or silver. Before the feast was over, an attendant carried 
round a figure of a mummy, bidding the guests enjoy the 
present hour, for mummies after death they all should be. 
The music at dinner came from the lyre, tambourine, and 
harp; and dancing, tumbling, and games with dice and 
with ball helped frivolity under the Pharoahs to pass its 
hours of idleness away. 

Such was the land of Egypt, the wonder of the nations 
of old, and a marvel to us in this age. Among all nations, 
for the massive and sublime, for the quaintly picturesque, 
it stands unrivalled in the world. An Arabian conqueror 
describes the land as “first a vast sea of dust; then a sea 
of fresh water; lastly, a sea of flowers,” and, in the time 
of inundation, as “a sea of islands.” When the waters 
cover the valley of the Nile, the villages and towns and 
scattered huts rise just above the level of the lake, and 
Virgil sings of how in the Delta, at that season, the farmer 


42 ANCIENT AND MEDIEVAL HISTORY 


“rides his fields in painted bark around/’ In the time 
when vegetation is luxuriant, the contrast of the greenery 
by the river, with the yellow sand of the desert and the red 
granite of the rocks and ruins, is very striking. So unlike 
all the rest of the world was Egypt in her nature and her 
art, that the mere names of things found there, and there 
alone, or there in hugest or in strangest form, call up the 
image of the whole strange land with magic power. Tem¬ 
ples, rock-tombs, gigantic ruins; the ibis, crocodile, ich¬ 
neumon, asp; the pyramids, the sphinx, the obelisks; the 
mummy, scarabseus, hieroglyph, papyrus—these were the 
products of the region where the Pharaohs reigned, where 
Moses grew from birth to manhood, where Joseph came 
forth from a dungeon to rule in wisdom at the King’s right 
hand, and whence the chosen people of God went out into 
the wilderness toward the promised land. 

HITTITES, CHALDEANS, ASSYRIANS, AND BABYLONIANS 

In the basin of the Euphrates and the Tigris we find 
a civilization which may be more ancient than that of 
Egypt. To explorations made during recent years we 
owe the discovery of this very ancient empire, that of 
the Babylonians or Chaldeans. 

Modern research has greatly added to our knowl¬ 
edge of the history of this region. In 1843 M. Botta, 
French consul at Mosul, on the Tigris, discovered at 
Khorsabad, twelve miles northeast of Mosul, and be¬ 
yond the river, an Assyrian palace which had been buried 
for perhaps two thousand years. Austin Layard, then a 
traveler in the East, was hereupon incited to make excava¬ 
tions in the lofty mounds of Nimrud, eighteen miles 
southeast of Mosul, and also beyond, i. e., east of the 
Tigris. The enterprise was rewarded with immediate 


HITTITES 


43 


and brilliant success. From the labors of Mr. Layard 
at Nimrud and at Koyunjik, on the Tigris, opposite to 
Mosul, came the slabs covered with cuneiform (wedge- 
shaped) or arrow-headed inscriptions, the huge winged 
bulls and lions, with human heads, bas-reliefs, figures, and 
ornaments, which are now to be seen, as one of its most 
valuable collections, in the British Museum. These ob¬ 
jects themselves gave instant and abundant information 
as to the state of art and the progress of civilization at the 
time when they were made, but the cuneiform inscriptions 
were a different matter. For these the penetrative power 
of superior intellects was needed, and the researches of 
numerous archaeologists have resulted in the deciphering 
of a vast number of the inscriptions containing the history 
of ancient Babylonia and Assyria and their Kings. 

Late research and the study of Egyptian and Assyrian 
inscriptions and of Biblical statements have unfolded to 
us the existence of a powerful people of the far past, long 
lost to history, yet seemingly great among the early na¬ 
tions. These were the Hittites, who were the rivals of 
the Pharaohs in peace and war from the twelfth to the 
twentieth Egyptian dynasty, and concerning whom there 
are references in the Bible extending over a thousand 
years. Their country, known as Khita, extended from 
the Euphrates on the east to far in Asia Minor on the 
west, having two capitals, Kadish and Carchemish. They 
pushed a wave of invasion southward as far as Hebron 
and Egypt, proving unpleasant neighbors to the Israelites, 
and stubbornly resisting the forces of the warlike Phara¬ 
ohs, until an alliance, offensive and defensive, was made B. 
C. 1383 between them and the great Pharaoh, Rameses II, 
who, in token of amity, married a daughter of Khitasire, 
King of Khita. Full account of this treaty and of the 
marriage are given on tablets discovered by recent Aus- 


44 ANCIENT AND MEDIEVAL HISTORY 

trian Egyptologists, and by a papyrus in the British 
Museum. The inscriptions on the walls of Thebes and 
the monuments found at Aleppo show the Hittites to have 
been of the Mongolian or Tartar race. They wore boots 
with long toes turning upwards, after the fashion revived 
during the Middle Ages, a short-skirted tunic, and gloves 
without fingers. The two-headed eagle of Austria occurs 
frequently upon Hittite monuments many ages before it 
was used by the Turcoman chiefs. The relics left by these 
mighty people prove them to have been fully equal in civ¬ 
ilization to the ancient Egyptians and to the Babylonians. 
Indeed, it was their wealth and luxury which made them 
the objects of attack by the Assyrians. Apparently their 
history is that of Egypt, Greece, Rome and all other na¬ 
tions that have grown great and luxurious and then been 
scattered because of their luxury. The Assyrians invaded 
Khita for the sake of spoil, returning with treasures of 
gold, copper and iron, of wood and ivory, slaves, and rich 
stuffs, as duly chronicled upon stones from Nineveh. 
They occupy an important place in Assyrian inscriptions, 
beginning in the reign of Sargon I. Under that of his 
sons they were finally subdued and their empire brought 
to an end by the capture of Carchemish and the defeat of 
Pisiri. Over 300 geographical names mentioned in these 
inscriptions show how extensive their empire was. Pro¬ 
fessor Sayce, the distinguished philologist, is of the opin¬ 
ion that the civilization of the Greeks was largely due to 
Hittite influences. Herodotus, Thales, Pythagoras, and 
Homer were all born in Asia Minor, and the Kiteians of 
whom Homer speaks in the Odyssey were supposed by 
Gladstone to be the Khetans or Hittites. 

The work of the Plittites seems, however, to have been 
carried on by the Chaldseans. Chaldsean is a word of sev¬ 
eral meanings, being applied to the early Babylonian em- 


CHALDEANS 


45 


pire; to a province of the later Babylonian empire; to 
a learned class, a priestly caste, at the court of Nebuchad¬ 
nezzar, King of the later Babylonian empire. In a sense 
similar to the last the word was familiar to the Romans. 
Philip Smith, in his “Ancient History," says: “The Chal- 
dasans at the court of Nebuchadnezzar are classed with 
the astrologers and magicians, had a learning and lan¬ 
guage of their own, and formed a sort of college. Those 
who acquired their learning, and were admitted into their 
body, were called Chaldseans, quite irrespective of their 
race, and thus Daniel became the master of the Chal- 
daeans.” 

The Chaldaean, or Old Babylonian, Empire was 
founded in the south of Mesopotamia, the alluvial plain 
between the Tigris and Euphrates. This country was, 
like Egypt with the Nile, the creation of these rivers by 
their deposits of rich mud. The waters were supplied for 
cultivation partly by the natural inundations, partly by 
artificial irrigating canals. The fertility of the district 
was famous in ancient times, producing wheat as an indig¬ 
enous crop, and other kinds of grain, with dates, grapes 
and other fruits. The rivers and the marshes supplied 
huge reeds, which were used to make houses and boats. 
The chief building material was bricks made from the clay 
found on the spot, and springs of bitumen furnished a 
strong cement. In this region, as told in Scripture, Nim¬ 
rod, the “mighty hunter,” of the race of Ham, founded a 
kingdom which included four cities named Babel (Bab¬ 
ylon ), Erech, Calneh, and Accad. The land of Shinar was 
the name used in the Hebrew Scriptures for the country 
called Babylonia. In the inscriptions it is known as 
Shumer and Accad, the southern and northern sections 
of old Babylonia. Babylon was the late capital and the 
ruins of various other cities have been identified. 


46 ANCIENT AND MEDIAEVAL HISTORY 

The inhabitants of Chaldaea of whom most is known, 
were undoubtedly of the Semitic race, and spoke a Semitic 
language closely akin to Hebrew. But the study of cune¬ 
iform inscriptions has revealed that there was here an 
earlier race as well as an earlier civilization than that of 
the Semites. This race, that of the Sumerians and Accadi- 
ans, was conquered by the Semites and disappeared from 
history. But it formed for several thousand years the 
literary people of the land, the inventor of the cuneiform 
system of writing and of much pertaining to the useful 
arts. It was a people of authors and libraries, who 
strongly influenced the civilization of the later nations. 

The beginnings of civilization in Babylonia are now 
held to date back to about 7000 B. C. In the cuneiform 
inscriptions there is an account of a great flood, strikingly 
similar in details to the flood in the time of Noah. At 
some time, perhaps two or three hundred years, before 
2000 B. C., the Kings of Elam invaded Babylonia, and 
for a time established themselves as rulers over it and 
Mesopotamia, and their supremacy lasted several centu¬ 
ries. Elam was a mountainous country to the eastward 
of Chaldaea, its capital being Susa. It is to this period of 
Chaldaean history that Abraham’s connection with the 
country belongs. It has been supposed that in Abraham’s 
time, about 2100 B. C., Chaldaea contained a Semitic pop¬ 
ulation professing a pure form of religion, in the midst of 
idolaters, and that Abraham, who was of Semitic race, 
was called to emigrate to the land of Canaan, with a view 
to the preservation of the pure faith. Chedorlaomer, King 
of Elam, invaded the land of Canaan soon after Abraham 
had migrated there, and, in his retreat with booty, was 
pursued and beaten by the brave patriarch. 

The period 2000-1000 B. C. was the most flourishing 
period of the monarchy, and Chaldaea was then the fore- 


CHALDEANS 


47 


most state of Western Asia in power as well as in science, 
art, and civilization. The rule of its princes extended to 
the mouth of the Euphrates and over Mesopotamia and the 
Upper Tigris. The rise of the powerful Assyrian Empire 
was what brought the downfall of Chaldsea, though it was 
able to maintain its independence against this rival down 
to the Ninth Century B. C. Indeed, it does not seem to 
have been thoroughly subdued, though greatly reduced 
from its former extent and power, till nearly two centuries 
later. 

With the Chaldaeans, as with the Egyptians, the art of 
writing, at first in the pictorial or hieroglyphic form, was 
early developed. Cuneiform, or wedge-shaped, writ¬ 
ing is a later stage of the pictorial, and the Chaldaeans may 
thus claim to be one of the nations that invented alpha¬ 
betical writing. The contents of their tombs prove that 
they had much skill in pottery, and could make in various 
metals such articles as bracelets, ear-rings, fishhooks, nails, 
bolts, rings, and chains. Philip Smith says: “It is, how¬ 
ever, by their cultivation of arithmetic and astronomy, and 
the application of these sciences to the uses of common life, 
that the Chaldaeans have left the most permanent impress 
upon all succeeding ages. . . . All the systems of 

weights and measures used throughout the civilized 
world, down to the present time, are based upon the sys¬ 
tem which they invented. . . . Astronomical science 

seems to have been the chief portion of the learning handed 
down by the Chaldaean priests as an hereditary possession. 

. . . There is reason to believe that they mapped out 
the Zodiac, invented the names which we still use for the 
seven days of the week (based on the idea that each hour 
of the day was governed by a planet, and each day by the 
governor of its first hour, and from this one the day 
received its name) . . . and measured time by the 


48 ANCIENT AND MEDIAEVAL HISTORY 


water-clock. . . . Connected with their astronomy 

and star-worship they had an elaborate system of judicial 
astrology.” The importance attributed to astronomy is 
attested by the fact that there were astronomers-royal in 
several of the cities, who had to send in reports regularly 
to the King. The towers, such as that of Babel, were prob¬ 
ably both temples and observatories. The clearness of the 
sky and the levelness of the horizon on all sides favored 
the study of astronomy, which was, moreover, connected 
with religion. It is known that Chaldseans worshiped 
the heavenly bodies. When Babylon was taken by Alex¬ 
ander the Great in B. C. 331, there was found in the city 
a series of observations of the stars dating from B. C. 2234. 

The Assyrians were a Semitic people, like the Chal- 
daeans, Hebrews, Arabs, and Phoenicians, and first 
acquired power in the district called Assyria, between the 
Upper Tigris and the Zagros Mountains. Assyria was in 
all probability peopled from Chaldaea, as the language, 
writing, and religion of both peoples exhibit the closest 
relationship and agreement. At an early period the Assyr¬ 
ians were subject to the Chaldsean monarchy, but their 
warlike spirit enabled them to become independent and to 
effect conquests among their neighbors, gaining at last the 
ascendency over Babylonia. Toward the end of the Four¬ 
teenth Century B. C., Shalmaneser is said to have founded 
the city of Calah on the upper Tigris, and to have restored 
the great temple at the ancient city of Nineveh. 

The early history of the Empire is still obscure, and 
no attention need be paid to the legends of Greek writers 
about Ninus, and the warrior-Queen Semiramis, and the 
voluptuous King Sardanapalus. About 1120 B. C., Tig- 
lath-Pileser I conquered nations to the west and north of 
Assyria, and to the borders of Babylonia on the south. 
He made his dominions stretch from the Mediterranean 


ASSYRIANS 


49 


to the Caspian, and was the greatest monarch of the ear¬ 
lier Assyrian period, but was not able to subdue the Chal- 
dseans. 

After the death of Tiglath-Pileser I comes a long time 
f of obscurity. Asurnasirpal carried on extensive war¬ 
like operations and made important conquests in the West. 
To him are attributed many of the great architectural 
works which have been lately discovered. He reigned 
from B. C. 884 to 859, and under him Assyria became the 
leading Empire of the world. He built afresh the city of 
Calah, then in ruins. The magnificent palaces and tem¬ 
ples built during this reign, with the sculptures and paint¬ 
ings that adorn them, prove the existence of great wealth 
and luxury, and the development of much artistic ability. 
His son Shalmaneser II, was successful in war against the 
monarch of Babylon, Benhadad, King of Damascus, the 
rulers of Tyre and Sidon, and Jehu, King of Israel. In 
B. C. 745 Tiglath-Pileser II became King of Assyria. He 
made himself master of Babylon, and had great successes 
in war against Syria and Armenia, extending the Empire 
from Lake Van on the north to the Persian Gulf, and from 
the borders of India to those of Egypt. Sargon reigned 
from B. C. 722 to 705, and was engaged in war against 
Samaria, which he captured, carrying the people into cap¬ 
tivity; against King Sabako, of Egypt, whom he defeated; 
and the revolted Armenians, whom he thoroughly sub¬ 
dued. He then turned against Merodach-Baladan, King 
of Babylonia, and drove him from his throne, and, after 
a period spent in internal reforms, was succeeded by his 
son, the famous Sennacherib. This warlike monarch 
marched into Syria in B. C. 7 0I > captured Zidon and As- 
kelon, defeated the forces of Hezekiali, King of Judah, 
with his Egyptian and Ethiopian allies, and made Heze- 
kiah pay tribute. In B. C. 700 Sennacherib marched into 


50 ANCIENT AND MEDIAEVAL HISTORY 

Arabia, where he defeated Tirhakah, King of Egypt and 
Ethiopia, and then his army perished before Libnah, in 
the south of Judah, by the catastrophe recorded in the 
Hebrew Scriptures. Sennacherib was engaged, on his 
return to Assyria, in crushing rebellions of the Babylon¬ 
ians, constructing canals and aqueducts, and greatly 
adding to the size and splendor of Nineveh. In 681 he 
was murdered by two of his sons, and another son, Esar- 
haddon, became King in 680. Esar-haddon made success¬ 
ful expeditions into Syria, Arabia, Egypt, and as far as 
the Caucasus Mountains, and after the erection of splendid 
buildings at Nimrud and other cities, was succeeded in 
667 by his son, Asurbanipal (the origin of the Greek 
“Sardanapalus”). 

The Assyrian Empire was at its height of power under 
the Kings Sennacherib, Esar-haddon, and Asurbanipal. 
The states nominally subject to the Assyrian King, paying 
tribute and homage, extended from the river Halys, in 
Asia Minor, and the sea-board of Syria, on the west, to 
the Persian Desert on the east, and from the Caspian Sea 
and the Armenian Mountains, on the north, to Arabia 
and the Persian Gulf, on the south, and latterly included 
Egypt. But these states were held together by a very loose 
bond of connection, and we read in the Assyrian history, 
on the monuments, of constant wars, revolts, crushings 
of rebellion, and rebellion renewed. The risings of tribu¬ 
tary states were put down with great severity, which 
included the carrying of whole peoples into captivity, and 
the destruction of cities, but no effectual measures were 
taken to secure allegiance in subjugated nations, and the 
Empire was doomed to be the victim of the first really 
powerful assailant. 

Asurbanipal inherited Egypt as part of his dominions, 
but his power was not firmly established in that country 


ASSYRIANS 


5 1 

until he led an expedition there and sacked the city of 
Thebes. He erected splendid buildings at Nineveh and 
Babylon, and did much for literature and the arts, so that 
under him there was a great development of luxury and 
splendor. He died in B. C. 625, and soon afterwards 
Babylonia, for the last time, and now successfully, 
revolted. The Babylonians marched from the south 
against Nineveh, under their governor Nabopolassar, and 
the now powerful Medes, from the north, came against it 
under their King, Cyaxares. Nineveh was taken and 
given to the flames, which have left behind them in the 
mounds the calcined stone, charred wood, and statues spilt 
by heat, that furnish silent and convincing proof of the 
catastrophe. Thus, about B. C. 625, warlike, splendid, 
proud Assyria fell. 

Modern research has unearthed much of the remains 
of Nineveh from beneath the mounds that for many miles 
are found along the eastern bank of the Tigris. We are 
not to think of it as being like a city of modern times, 
composed of continuous or nearly adjacent buildings. The 
city was a large expanse, supposed to be at least sixty miles 
in circuit, containing temples, palaces, pasture-lands, 
ploughed fields and hunting-parks, as well as the dwellings 
of the people, built of sun-dried bricks. It thus resembled 
a modern suburban district, but included the stately struc¬ 
tures for the uses of religion and of royalty, which in 
modern cities usually hold a central place amongst dense 
masses of connected streets and squares. At the time of 
Alexander the Great, in the Fourth Century B. C., almost 
every trace of the great city in which Jonah preached 
repentance had vanished, save the shapeless mounds of 
earth. 

The Assyrian language was much like the Hebrew and 
Phoenician, and had a literature comprising hymns to the 


52 ANCIENT AND MEDIAEVAL HISTORY 

gods, mythological and epic poems, and works on astrol¬ 
ogy, law, and chronology. The religion of Assyria was 
a worship of various gods, representing the powers of 
nature, and especially the heavenly bodies. The great 
national deity was Asur, appearing in the nation’s name 
and in those of many of the Kings. All religion was con¬ 
nected with royalty, and in the pure despotism of Assyria 
the King was himself a deity, a type of the supreme being. 
All his acts in peace or war, were divine acts, and his robes 
and ornaments all have embroideries and figured animals 
of mystical religious import. 

Assyrian art must be considered great in architecture 
and sculpture. The emblematic figures of the gods show 
dignity and grandeur. The scenes from real life, of war, 
and of the chase, are bold and vivid; and in succeeding 
ages marked progress is shown in the acquirement of a 
more free, natural, lifelike, and varied execution, though 
the artists never learnt perspective and proportion. The 
Assyrians, as the sculptures and other remains prove, con¬ 
structed arches, tunnels, and aqueducts; they were skilled 
in engraving gems, and in the arts of enameling and inlay¬ 
ing; they made porcelain, transparent and colored glass, 
and even lenses; ornaments of bronze and ivory, bells and 
golden bracelets, and earrings of good design and work¬ 
manship, were all produced. In mechanics, and for 
measuring time, they used the pulley, the lever, the water- 
clock, and the sun-dial. Their astronomical science was 
that of the Chaldsean philosophers. 

The implements and methods used in war, as the mon¬ 
uments show, included swords, spears, maces, and bows 
and arrows, as weapons of offence; cavalry and chariots 
for charging; movable towers and battering-rams for 
sieges; and circular entrenched camps as quarters for a 
military force. The one thing wanting in Assyria, as in 


BABYLONIANS 


53 


other Eastern Empires, for continued sway, was the genius 
for government which could at least make subject nations . 
satisfied to serve, if it could not mould them into one 
coherent whole. 

The history of the later Babylonian Empire begins 
with the year 625 B. C., and ends in 538 with its subjec¬ 
tion to Persia. The founder of the Empire was Nabopo- 
lassar, the Assyrian general who joined the Medes in 
the destruction of the Assyrian power. Babylon then 
became an independent Kingdom, extending from the val¬ 
ley of the lower Euphrates to Mount Taurus, and partly 
over Syria, Phoenicia, and Palestine. 

Nabopolassar was succeeded by his son, the famous 
Nebuchadnezzar, who reigned from B. C. 604 to 561, and 
carried his arms with success against the cities of Jerusa¬ 
lem and Tyre, and even into Egypt. The Empire was at 
its height of power and glory under him, and extended 
from the Euphrates to Egypt, and from the deserts of 
Arabia on the south to the Armenian Mountains on the 
north. Nebuchadnezzar’s chief work in home affairs was 
the renovation and decoration of the great city Babylon, 
capital of the Empire. This famous place was built on 
both sides of the Euphrates, and, on its completion by 
Nebuchadnezzar, formed a square said to have been sixty 
miles in circuit. The clay of the country furnished abun¬ 
dant and excellent brick, and springs of bitumen supplied 
a powerful cement. The walls of the city were of im¬ 
mense height and thickness, surrounded by a deep ditch, 
and having a hundred brazen gates. Like Nineveh, the 
city included large open spaces, some being parks and 
pleasure-grounds of the King and the nobles. The arch¬ 
itectural wonder of the place were the temple of Belus, a 
huge eight-storied tower, the remains of which are be¬ 
lieved to be identified at Birs Nimrud, “the tower of Nim- 


54 ANCIENT AND MEDIAEVAL HISTORY 

rod,” on the west side of the Euphrates, six miles south¬ 
west of the town of Hillah; and the “hanging gardens” 
of Nebuchadnezzar, which consisted of a series of terraces 
rising one above another, supported by huge pillars and 
arches, and covered with earth, in which grew beautiful 
shrubs and trees. 

The carrying into captivity of the Jews by Nebuchad¬ 
nezzar, and the pride of his heart, his image of gold in the 
plain of Dura, his fiery furnace, his strange madness, 
recovery, and repentance, are well known from the inter¬ 
esting and eloquent account in the Hebrew Scriptures, as 
written by the prophet Daniel. 

Nebuchadnezzar was succeeded by his son, Evil- Mero- 
dach, the friend of Jehoiachin, captive King of Judah. He 
was followed by Neriglassar, a successful conspirator 
against his power and life, who, after some years, was 
defeated and slain in battle against the Medes and Per¬ 
sians. After a few months of tyranny, ended by assassina¬ 
tion, under the cruel and sensual Laborosoarchod, the last 
Babylonian monarch, Nabonadius came to the throne, in 
B. C. 555. The Medes and Persians to the north had now 
become a formidable power, and in 540 the Babylonians 
came into collision with them. The Persian King, Cyrus, 
marched against Babylon, and under its walls defeated 
Nabonadius, who fled to Borsippa, a city to the south of 
Babylon. The capital was held by a son of Nabonadius, 
who had been made co-king with his father, and is known 
to us by the name of Belshazzar. The revelries of this 
sovereign during the siege, the handwriting on the wall, 
and his death on that same night, are given in the Scrip¬ 
tural narrative of Daniel. According to Herodotus, the 
army of Cyrus entered the city along the bed of the river 
Euphrates, which they had drained off into canals, and 
thus the Babylonian Empire fell in B. C. 538, and became 


BABYLONIANS 


55 


a province of the Persian Empire. Recently deciphered 
inscriptions, however, would seem to prove that this 
account is erroneous, and that the city was surrendered 
without any siege. The site of the great city of Babylon 
is now a marsh formed by inundations of the river, due 
to the destruction of the embankments and the choking up 
of the canals. 

The Assyrians were, pre-eminently, a warlike, the 
Babylonians a commercial and luxurious people. The 
position of the great city on the lower Euphrates, near to 
the Persian Gulf, made it a great emporium for the trade 
between India and Eastern Asia and Western Asia, with 
the nearest parts of Africa and Europe. From Ceylon 
came ivory, cinnamon, and ebony; spices from the East¬ 
ern islands; myrrh and frankincense from Arabia; cotton, 
pearls, and valuable timber, both for shipbuilding and 
ornament, from the islands in the Persian Gulf. There 
was also a great caravan trade with Northern India and 
adjacent lands, whence came gold, dyes, jewels, and fine 
wool. The wealth of Babylon became prodigious and 
proverbial, and her commerce was in large measure due to 
ingenious and splendid manufactures. Carpets, curtains, 
and fine muslins, skillfully woven and brilliantly dyed, of 
elegant pattern and varied hue, were famous wherever 
luxury was known. The Babylonian gems in the British 
Museum display art of the highest order in cutting preci¬ 
ous stones. 

The system of government was a pure despotism, with 
viceroys ruling the provinces under the monarch, who 
dwelt in luxurious seclusion from his people. The fall of 
Babylon was a proof that the real power of nations does 
not reside in trade and luxury and wealth, but in the spirit, 
equal to the occasions both of peace and of war, developed 
in a people by the possession of freedom, 


56 ANCIENT AND MEDIAEVAL HISTORY 


THE ISRAELITES 

The Hebrews were a pure Semitic race, akin to the 
Phoenicians, Chaldaeans, and Assyrians. The founder of 
the nation was Abraham, who in the Twentieth or Twenty- 
first Century B. C., removed from the plains of Mesopo¬ 
tamia to the land of Canaan, on the south-eastern coast 
of the Mediterranean Sea. 

In this people we have the worship of the one spiritual 
God—Jehovah—the purely One. In the Jewish idea He 
was the God of a family that became a nation—the God of 
Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob, He who commanded 
them to depart out of Egypt and gave them the land of 
Canaan. With the other Eastern nations, the primary 
and fundamental existence was Nature; but that, with the 
Hebrews, becomes a mere creature, and Spirit is foremost. 
God is the creator of Nature and all men, the only first 
cause of all things. The great element in the Jewish 
religion was exclusive unity—only one people, only one 
God. All other gods were regarded as thoroughly false; 
nothing divine was admitted to exist in them. In the 
religion of the Hebrews, Spirit became the one great truth, 
and true morality appeared; God was honored, and could 
be honored, only by righteousness, the reward of which 
was to be happiness, life, and temporal prosperity. 

Their earliest history, as told in the Bible, that of Abra¬ 
ham and his first descendant, is merely a family history, 
and the Jewish nation begins with the departure from 
Egypt perhaps about B. C. 1320. 

The interval between that time and the conquest of 
Judaea by the Romans may be divided into four periods. 

From the departure out of Egypt to the establishment 
of the monarchy under Saul, about B. C. 1320-1067; 

From the establishment of the monarchy to the sepa- 



JUDITH 
































































THE ISRAELITES 


5 7 

ration into the two kingdoms of Israel and Judah, about 
B. C. 1067-975; 

From the separation of the kingdoms to the Babylon¬ 
ian captivity, B. C. 975-588; 

From the Babylonian captivity to the conquest of 
Tud^a by Rome, B. C. 588-63. 

The first period opens, on the departure from Egypt, 1 
with the theocracy or government by God in revelations 5 
of His will to the people, through laws directly given from 
Sinai, and communications made to the high-priest. This 
lasted, during the wanderings in the wilderness under 
Moses, and the conquest of Canaan under Joshua, until 
perhaps B. C. 1250. Then came the tribal federation, 
for some two centuries, under which the tribes were sep¬ 
arately governed, subject to the divine laws, by their own 
patriarchs, but were all united in one state and one com¬ 
mon bond by the worship of Jehovah. As the people 
from time to time fell off into idolatry, they suffered at the 
hands of neighboring tribes, and rulers called “Judges” 
were given by divine appointment to deliver the people, 
governing according to the divine laws, and having no 
royal prerogatives. Of this line of rulers the last was 
the Prophet Samuel, and the misconduct of his sons 
caused the people to ask for a King. 

The time of the sole monarchy includes three reigns, 
those of Saul, David, and Solomon. Saul reigned for 
A period of unknown duration, and, after wars with vari¬ 
ous neighboring peoples known as Moabites, Edomites, 
Amalekites, etc., was defeated and driven to suicide by 
the powerful Philistines. Saul’s son-in-law, David, the 
son of Jesse, reigned also about forty years, from B. C. 
1056 to 1015, and having conquered Jerusalem from the 
Jebusites in 1048, made it the capital of his kingdom, the 
seat of the national government and religion. David was 


58 ANCIENT AND MEDIAEVAL HISTORY 

a warlike monarch, and conquered the Philistines, Moab¬ 
ites, Edomites, and Syrians, extending his power from the 
Red Sea to the Euphrates. His son Solomon succeeded 
him in B. C. 1015, and also reigned forty years, from 1015 
to 975. Under him the Jewish nation attained the height 
of its power, and he confirmed and extended the con¬ 
quests of David. Solomon married a daughter of a 
Pharaoh, King of Egypt, formed an alliance with Hiram, 
King of Tyre, built the magnificent temple at Jerusalem, 
and made his kingdom the supreme monarchy in Western 
Asia. An extensive commerce was carried on by land 
and sea. Solomon’s ships, manned by Phoenician sailors, 
traded to the furthest parts of the Mediterranean west¬ 
ward, and from ports on the Red Sea to Southern Arabia, 
Ethiopia, and perhaps India. From Egypt came horses, 
chariots, and linen; ivory, gold, silver, peacocks and apes 
from Tarshish or Tartessus, a district in the south of 
Spain; and gold, spices, and jewels from the place called 
Ophir, variously placed in Southern Arabia, India, and 
Eastern Africa, south of the Red Sea. The corn, wine 
and oil of Judaea were exchanged by Solomon for the 
cedars of Lebanon supplied by Hiram, King of Tyre. 

On the death of Solomon, in B.C. 975, the temporal 
glory of the Hebrews was eclipsed. Ten of the twelve 
tribes revolted against Solomon’s son and successor, Reho- 
boam, and formed a separate Kingdom of Israel, with 
Samaria as capital, while the tribes of Judah and Benjamin 
made up the Kingdom of Judah, having Jerusalem for the 
chief city. The Syrian possessions were lost; the Am¬ 
monites became independent; commerce declined; idolatry 
crept in and grew; the prophets of God threatened and 
warned in vain; gleams of success against neighboring 
nations were mingled with defeat and disgrace suffered 
from the Edomites, Philistines, and Syrians, until, in B.C. 


THE ISRAELITES 


59 


740, Tiglath-pileser II, King of Assyria, carried off into 
captivity to Media the tribes east, and partly west, of the 
Jordan—Reuben, Gad, and Manasseh. In B.C. 721 Sar- 
gon, King of Assyria, took Samaria, and carried away 
the people of Israel as captives, beyond the Euphrates. 
The Kingdom of Israel thus came to an end after a dura¬ 
tion of about 250 years. In B.C. 713 Judah, under King 
Hezekiah, was attacked by Sennacherib, King of Assyria, 
and relieved by the destruction of the Assyrian army. A 
time of peace and prosperity followed, but in 677 the 
Assyrians again invaded the country, and carried off King 
Manasseh to Babylon. In B.C. 624 the good King Josiah 
repaired the temple and put down idolatry, but was de¬ 
feated and slain by the Egyptian King, Pharaoh-Necho, 
in 610. In B.C. 606 Nebuchadnezzar, King of Babylon, 
took Jerusalem, and made the King, Jehoiakim, tributary; 
on his revolt Jerusalem was again taken, and 10,000 cap¬ 
tives of the higher class were carried off to Babylon, with 
the treasures of the palace and temple, in 599. In B.C. 
593 the Jewish King, Zedekiah, revolted from Nebuchad¬ 
nezzar, who now determined to make an end of the exist¬ 
ence of the rebellious nation. In B.C. 588 Jerusalem was 
taken and plundered; the walls were destroyed, and the 
city and temple burnt, and nearly the whole nation was 
carried away as prisoners to Babylon. For over fifty 
years the land lay desolate, and the history of the Hebrew 
nation is transferred to the land where they mourned in 
exile. 

The history of the Jews during the Babylonish cap¬ 
tivity is contained chiefly in the book of Daniel, and in¬ 
cludes the episodes of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, 
the faithful Jews thrown into the furnace by order of 
Nebuchadnezzar, and of Daniel’s deliverance when he was 
thrown into a pit containing lions by order of Darius the 


6o ANCIENT AND MEDIAEVAL HISTORY 


Mede, or Cyaxares II, who was placed by the success of 
his nephew Cyrus on the throne of Babylon after the death 
of Belshazzar. In B.C. 537 Cyaxares II died, and Cyrus 
became monarch of the Persian Empire. He issued an 
edict in B. C. 536, by which the Jews were allowed to 
return to Jerusalem and rebuild their temple. Nearly 
50,000 Jews, chiefly of the tribes of Judah and Benjamin, 
went to the old home of their race under the command of 
Zerubbabel and Jeshua, taking with them many of the 
vessels of silver and gold carried away by Nebuchad¬ 
nezzar. Zerubbabel was appointed Governor of the land, 
now a dependency of the Persian Empire. In B.C. 519 
the Persian King, Darius Hystaspis, confirmed the edict 
of Cyrus, and in 515 the temple was completed and dedi¬ 
cated. The ten tribes disappear at this time from history, 
such of them as returned to their land having united them¬ 
selves with the tribe of Judah, and henceforth the Hebrews 
are called Jews and their country Judaea. In the reign of 
the Persian King, Artaxerxes Longimanus, more of the 
Jews emigrated from Babylonia to Judaea under the com¬ 
mand of Ezra, B.C. 458, and Ezra was Governor of the 
land until 445. Nehemiah was Governor, (with an inter¬ 
val), from 445 to 420, and under him the walls and towers 
of Jerusalem were rebuilt, and the city acquired something 
of its ancient importance. With B. C. 420 the history of 
the Jews ends, as far as the Scriptural narrative goes in 
books esteemed to be of sacred authority. 

( From 420 to 332 Judaea continued subject to Persia, 
paying a yearly tribute, and being governed by the high- 
priest, under the Satrap of Syria. In B.C. 332 Alexander 
the Great, then engaged in conquering the Persian Em¬ 
pire, visited Jerusalem, and showed respect to the High- 
priest and the sacred rites of the Temple. In 330 the 
Persian Empire fell under the arms of Alexander, who 


THE ISRAELITES 


61 


died at Babylon in B. C. 323. Judaea was taken possession 
of by Alexander’s General, Ptolemy Lagus, and from 300 
to 202 B.C. was governed by the dynasty of the Ptolemies, 
ruling Egypt, Arabia Petraea, and Southern Syria. The 
Government was administered by the High-priest under 
the Ptolemies, whose capital was at the new city of Alex¬ 
andria in Egypt. At this time the Jews began to spread 
themselves over the world, the Greek language became, 
common in Judaea, and the Septuagint (or Greek version 
of the Hebrew Scriptures), was written during this and 
the following Century. In B.C. 202 Antiochus the Great, 
King of Syria (including in its empire Asia Minor, Meso¬ 
potamia, Babylonia, etc.), conquered Judaea from Ptolemy 
V. Antiochus Epiphanes, one of the sons and successors 
of the great Antiochus, drove the Jews to rebellion by 
persecution and profanation of their Temple and religion. 

Under the great patriot and hero, Judas Maccabaeus, 
the Jews asserted their religious freedom in B.C. 166. 
Antiochus Epiphanes died in 164, and Maccabaeus fought 
with success against the Idumaeans, Syrians, Phoenicians, 
and others, who had formed a league for the destruction 
of the Jews. In 163 Judas Maccabaeus became Governor 
of Judaea under the King of Syria, but fell in battle, in 
161, while he was resisting an invasion of his country by 
the troops of Demetrius Soter, new ruler of the Empire. 
His brother, Jonathan Maccabaeus, ruled from B.C. 161 to 
143 amidst many troubles from Syria, and was succeeded 
by his brother, Simon Maccabaeus, who strengthened the 
land by fortifications, was recognized by the Romans as 
High-priest and ruler of Judaea, and fell by assassination 
in B.C. 136. Plis son, John Hyrcanus, threw off at last 
the yoke of Syria, and made himself master of all Judaea, 
Galilee, and Samaria,, reigning then in peace till B. C. 106, 
when the line of the greater Maccabaean Princes ended. 


62 


ANCIENT AND MEDIAEVAL HISTORY 


A miserable time of civil wars and religious and political 
faction followed. These ended in the interference of 
Rome, and in B.C. 63 Pompeius Magnus took Jerusalem 
after a siege of three months, and entered the “Holy of 
Holies” in the Temple, with a profanation before unheard 
of in Jewish history. 

From this time the Jewish state was virtually subject to 
Rome, and became in the end a part of the Roman province 
of Syria. The turbulence of the Jews under Roman rule 
is well known, and a general rebellion ended, after fearful 
bloodshed and misery, in the capture and destruction of 
Jerusalem by Titus, A. D. 70. The history, as a separate 
political body, of the chosen people of God, unequaled in 
the annals of our race for sin and suffering, ends with the 
dispersion of their remnant over the face of the civilized 
world. 

The Hebrew language, in the antiquity of its literary 
remains, surpasses all the other Semitic tongues, and in 
the importance of its chief treasures, the books of the Old 
Testament canon, outweighs all other languages. The 
country of the Hebrew nation was of very limited extent; 
the political value of the race, as compared with that of the 
great Eastern empires, was trifling; the contributions of 
the Jews to art and science, until the downfall and disper¬ 
sion of the people, were yet more insignificant. It was 
their mission to conserve and to convey to future ages that 
deposit of moral and spiritual truth which, combined with 
its development and exaltation in the form of Christianity, 
was to influence mankind in all time to come. 

THE PHOENICIANS 

The Phoenicians were the people most distinguished 
in the most ancient times for industry, commerce, and 
navigation. They were of pure Semitic race, closely con- 


THE PHOENICIANS 


63 


nected with the Hebrews in blood and language, and be¬ 
came a separate nation so early that they are found to 
have settled on the southeastern coasts of the Mediterran¬ 
ean before the arrival of the Israelites in Canaan, in the 
Fifteenth Century B. C. The distinctive character of the 
Phoenicians among the nations of the most ancient world 
is, that they were colonizers, not conquerors; peaceful mer¬ 
chants, not fighting meddlers; intrepid and enterprising 
seamen, not bold and ambitious soldiers; industrious and 
ingenious workmen and creators, not ruthless and wanton 
destroyers of the labors of their fellow-men. 

A high place in the history of ancient civilization is 
held by the Phoenicians, for their diffusion of commodities 
and of culture partly produced at home, in part received 
from abroad. They present a new principle of develop¬ 
ment in civilization, that of a nation relying solely on the 
activity of industry, combined with the careful bravery 
which dares the deep, and devises means of safety thereon. 
Man’s courage, energy, and intelligence is brought into 
play mainly for the benefit, not the bane, of mankind. 
Foremost in Phoenicia are human will and work, not 
Nature’s bounty, as in the fertile valleys of the Nile, 
Tigris, and Euphrates. In Babylonia and Egypt, human 
subsistence depended largely upon Nature and the sun; 
in maritime Phoenicia, on the sailor’s skill and courage. 
Valor gives way to intelligence, and warlike ferocity to 
ingenuity, in this sea-faring and manufacturing life, and 
thus the nations were freed from a bondage to Nature and 
from fear of her powers upon the ever-flowing sea. 

Phoenicia was a narrow strip of country on the south¬ 
eastern coast of the great inland sea of antiquity, lying 
chiefly between Mount Lebanon and the Mediterranean 
shore, and extending for about 120 miles north of Mount 
Carmel, the scene of the contempt poured on her great 


64 ANCIENT AND MEDIAEVAL HISTORY 

god Baal by the prophet Elijah. Here lay the cities Tyre 
and Sidon, Byblus and Berytus, Tripolis and Ptolemais. 
The land was fertile, and rich in timber-trees and fruits, 
such as the pine, fir, cypress, sycamore, and cedar; figs, 
olives, dates, pomegranates, citrons, almonds. Here was 
material for trade abroad, and comfort and prosperity at 
home, and the coast was so thickly studded with towns as 
almost to make one continuous populated line. 

Phoenicia's history is peculiar in that it is a history of 
separate cities and colonies, never united into one great 
independent state, though now and then alliances existed 
between several cities in order to repel a common danger. 
When the Israelites conquered Canaan in the middle of 
the Fifteenth Century B. C., they interfered but slightly 
with Phoenicia, and the two peoples dwelt side by side in 
friendship nearly always undisturbed. Each city of Phoe¬ 
nicia was governed by a King or a petty chief, under or 
with whom an aristocracy, and at times elective magis¬ 
trates, called in Latin suffetes, appear to have held sway. 
But Phoenician government is an obscure and unimportant 
subject; the genius of the race cared little for political 
development, and was one-sided in its devotion to com¬ 
mercial matters, regardless, in comparison, of freedom 
from inward or external domination. The two chief 
cities in the history are Sidon and Tyre. 

Of these, Sidon was probably the more ancient, being 
named in the Pentateuch as chief of the Phoenician cities, 
while its richly embroidered robes are mentioned in the 
Homeric poems. It was the greatest maritime place until 
its colony, Tyre, surpassed it, and it seems to have been 
subject to Tyre in the time of David and Solomon. About 
700 B.C. it became independent again, but was taken by 
Nebuchadnezzar, King of Babylon, about B.C. 600, and 
became subject to Persia about B.C. 500. Under the 


THE PHOENICIANS 


65 


Persian rule, it was a great and populous city, and, coming 
into the hands of Alexander the Great in B.C. 333, helped 
him with a fleet in his siege of Tyre. Its history ends with 
submission to Roman power in the last Century, year 
63 B.C. Tyre was a powerful city as early as 1200 B.C. 
The friendship of her King Hiram with Solomon (reigned 
B.C. 1015-975) is well known from the Hebrew Scriptures, 
and at this time the commerce of Tyre was foremost in 
the Mediterranean, and her ships sailed into the Indian 
Ocean from the port of Elath on the Red Sea. Tyre is 
celebrated in history for her obstinate resistance to ene¬ 
mies. Sargon, King of Assyria, besieged the city in vain 
for five years, B.C.721-717. Nebuchadnezzar took thir¬ 
teen years, B.C. 598-585, to capture the place partially, 
and it was only taken by Alexander the Great after a seven 
months' siege, in B.C. 332. The old glory of Tyre de¬ 
parted with the transfer of her chief trade to her con¬ 
queror’s creation, Alexandria, though the indomitable 
energy of the Phoenician race had again, in Roman times, 
made her a great seat of trade. 

Phoenicia was at the height of prosperity from the 
Eleventh to the Sixth Centuries B.C. As a colonizing 
country she preceded the Greeks on the shores and islands 
of the Mediterranean, and sent her ships to regions that the 
Greeks knewnothingof, save by report of the bold mariners 
of Tyre. Until the rise of Alexandria, about B. C. 300, the 
sea-trade of Phoenicia was rivaled only by that of Carthage, 
her own colony, and she still kept up her great land-trade 
by caravans with Arabia, with Central Asia and Northern 
India (through Babylonia), and with Scythia and the Cau¬ 
casian countries, through Armenia. Their colonies were 
planted on the coasts and islands of the Mediterranean, in 
Cyprus, Rhodes, the Islands of the ^Egean Sea, Sardinia, 
Sicily, the Balearic Islands, Cilicia (in southeast of Asia 
Voi,. 1—5 


66 ANCIENT AND MEDIAEVAL HISTORY 


Minor), and in Spain. Westward, they even passed out of 
the Mediterranean, and were the founders at an early period 
of Gades, the modern Cadiz. They first in all the ancient 
world pushed out into the Atlantic Ocean, crossed the 
stormy region of the ‘‘Bay of Biscay,” and traded to the 
British coast for tin from the Scilly Isles and Cornwall. 
Tradition tells of their mariners reaching sunny fertile 
shores in what must have been either the Canary Islands 
or the Azores. Under the patronage of Necho, King of 
Egypt, Phoenician sailors went round Africa from the 
Red Sea to the Nile. In the Eastern seas, thev had estab- 
lishments on the Arabian and Persian Gulfs, from which 
they traded to the eastern coast of Africa, to Western 
India, and to Ceylon. By far the most renowned of all 
Phoenician colonies—famous in poetry for Dido’s hopeless 
love and hapless death, in history for Hannibal’s heroic 
hate of Rome and warlike skill—was Carthage, in the 
center of the northern coast of Africa. The date of her 
foundation is put about 850 B.C. At Utica and Tunis, 
to the north and south, Phoenician settlements were 
already existing. 

The trade of Tyre and her sister-cities reached almost 
throughout the then known world. They exported wares 
and manufactures of their own; they imported and re¬ 
exported products of every region east and south of their 
own land, that had anything of value for the markets of 
nations dwelling round the great central sea. Thus to 
Phoenicia came the spices—notably myrrh and frankincense 
—of Arabia; the ivory, ebony, and cotton goods of India; 
linen-yam, and corn from Egypt; wool and wine from 
Damascus; embroideries from Babylon and Nineveh; pot¬ 
tery, in the days of Grecian art, from Attica; horses and 
chariots from Armenia; copper from the shores of the 
Euxine Sea; lead from Spain; tin from Cornwall. From 


THE PHOENICIANS 


67 

Phoenicia went to foreign ports, not only these articles of 
food and use and luxury, but the rich purple dyes made 
from the murex (a kind of shell-fish) of her coast, the 
famous hue of Tyre, with which were tinged the silken 
costly robes worn by the despots of that time. From 
Sidon went the not less famous glass produced in part from 
fine white sand found near the headland called Mount Car¬ 
mel. So great and so important was the trade by cara¬ 
vans through Babylon with the interior of Asia that the 
great town Palmyra (or “Tadmor in the desert”) was 
founded or enlarged by Solomon to serve the traffic on its 
route through Syria to the valley of the Tigris and 
Euphrates. With lawful trade these ancient merchants, 
like the English in the reign of Oueen Elizabeth, combined 
a taste for piracy and for indulgence in a slave-trade which 
included the kidnapping, at times, of Hebrew victims to 
the lust of gold. 

As a money-making race the Phoenicians were skilled 
in arts by which the grand aim of its life could be attained. 
Phoenician drinking-cups of silver and of gold, and Sidon’s 
works in brass, were famous, and her weavers were skilled 
in making cloth of flax and of cotton, grown and spun in 
Egypt. Great as they were at the dyeing-vat and loom, 
adepts in working metals and in fabricating glass, they 
were also the best shipbuilders, and the most famous 
miners of their time. Their energy and enterprising char¬ 
acter are beyond dispute, but much has been ascribed to 
their invention, in the sciences and arts, which they re¬ 
ceived from nations further East. Their greatest service 
to civilization seems rather to have been in appropriating, 
developing, and spreading the ideas of others, especially 
in forming an alphabet for the Western world. 

Although the story about the mythical Cadmus taking 
his sixteen letters from Phoenicia into Greece must be 


68 ANCIENT AND MEDIAEVAL HISTORY 


rejected, the European world owes to this race of traders 
the alphabetic symbols now in use. The Greeks and 
Romans from the Phoenicians, and most of modern Eu¬ 
rope from the Romans, acquired these precious and indis¬ 
pensable rudiments of learning. The gradual change of 
shape is easily traced in most of the signs. The simple 
and ingenious device by which each sign stands for one 
elementary sound of human speech is largely due to the 
Phoenician people, as an improvement on the cumbrous 
hieroglyphs of Egypt. Of literature they have left noth¬ 
ing whatever recognized by scholars as really theirs. 

In morals, they had a name for craftiness in trade, and 
wealth led to worse than luxury—to soft licentiousness 
and flagrant vice. Their religion was a kind of nature- 
worship, which adored the sun and moon and five planets, 
the chief deities being the male Baal, and the female Ash- 
toreth, or Astarte. The worship itself was a sensual 
excess and revelry, combined with cruelty. Children were 
offered in sacrifice to idols, and the foulness of the rites is 
known by the denunciations of the Hebrew prophets Jere¬ 
miah and Ezekiel. At Tyre a deity was worshipped with 
the attributes of the Greek god Hercules. The worship 
of Adonis, under the name of Thammuz, in the coast- 
towns, included a commemoration of his death, a funeral- 
festival, at which women gave way to extravagant lamen¬ 
tations. It was Phoenician women, fair of face, that 
tempted Solomon the wise to foul idolatry; it was a Prin¬ 
cess of Phoenicia, Jezebel, that brought Ahab, her husband, 
King of Israel, to ruin, that slew the prophets of God, and 
left a name proverbial for infamy in life, and for ignom¬ 
inious horror in her death. The work done by Phoenicia 
in the cause of human progress was important and interest¬ 
ing in material things, but not, with one great exception, 
leading to intellectual ends or moral and political improve¬ 
ment. 


THE MEDES AND PERSIANS 


69 


THE MEDES AND THE PERSIANS 

The last of the great Oriental empires was that of the 
Medes and Persians, commonly known as “the Persian 
Empire,” which absorbed all the territories of Western and 
Southwestern Asia (except Arabia), as well as Egypt 
and a small portion of Europe. The Medes and the Per¬ 
sians are treated of together, because of their intimate con¬ 
nection in race and the fact that Media was conquered by 
and included in Persia, as the latter empire rose into power 
and importance in the Western Asiatic world. Media 
occupied the table-land south of the Caspian Sea, east of 
Armenia and the Zagros Mountains, and north and west 
of the mountains of Persia Proper and the great rainless 
Persian desert or desert of Iran. The mountain ranges 
inclosed fertile valleys, rich in corn and fruits, and the 
Zagros Mountains had on their pastures splendid horses 
of the breed famous as the Nissan, which supplied the 
studs of the King and nobles of Persia. Persis, or Persia 
Proper, was a mountainous district between the desert of 
Iran and the northeastern shore of the Persian Gulf. The 
country contained, amongst its hills, fertile plains and 
valleys abounding in corn, pasture, and fruits. 

The Medes were of Aryan race, and, like the Persians, 
called themselves “Aryans.” Their close connection, in 
origin and institutions, with the Persians is shown in the 
famous expression, “The law of the Medes and Persians, 
which altereth not.” The people began to migrate into 
Media at an early period, of which we have no record, 
from the original abode of the Aryan race. By degrees 
they overcame the Scythian races whom they found in 
possession of the land. The Medes were a warlike race, 
strong in cavalry and archers. Their language was a 
dialect of the Zend, the ancient tongue of Persia, and their 


70 ANCIENT AND MEDIAEVAL HISTORY 

religion was the Magian, which involved the worship of a 
good principle or deity called Ormuzd, and the practice of 
divination of his will by dreams and omens. The Median 
tribes, who seem to have been in part subject to the King 
of Assyria, began toward 700 B. C. to be cemented to¬ 
gether under a chief named Deioces, who chose as his 
capital Ecbatana, identified with the modern Hamadan. 
Under his son Phraortes their power grew stronger, and 
that monarch subdued the Persians, but perished in war 
with the Assyrians. Cyaxares, son of Phraortes, renewed 
the war against the Assyrians. Cyaxares extended the 
Median Empire westward, by conquest, through Armenia 
to the River Halys in Asia Minor. His great achievement 
was the capture of Nineveh about B.C. 620, in alliance with 
the revolted Babylonians, and the consequent overthrow 
of the Assyrian empire. Cyaxares reigned forty years 
and died about B.C. 593. He was succeeded by his son 
Astyages, who reigned for over thirty years, and seems 
to have been a despot of quiet life and peaceful disposition, 
enjoying what his father had acquired. Against him the 
Persians, under their Prince Cyrus, revolted about 558 
B.C., and, being joined by a portion of the Median army 
under a chief named Harpagus, they took Ecbatana and 
deposed the Median ruler. From this time the two na¬ 
tions were spoken of as one people. Ecbatana became the 
summer residence of the Persian Kings. After the death 
of Alexander the Great, 324 B.C., the northwest portion 
(Atropatene) of Media became a separate kingdom, which 
existed until the time of Augustus. 

In race, language, and religion, the Persians were 
closely connected with the Medes. Of their early migra¬ 
tion to the home where history finds them, little is known. 
They appear first in human records as hardy and warlike 
mountaineers, noble specimens of the great Aryan race. 


THE MEDES AND PERSIANS 


7i 


They were simple in their ways of life, noted for truthful¬ 
ness, keen-witted, generous, and quick-tempered. The 
language which they brought with them when they mi¬ 
grated is known as the Zend, closely allied to the Sanscrit, 
and now only existing in the sacred books of the Zenda- 
vesta, containing the doctrine of Zoroaster, King of Bac- 
tria, founder of the Magian religion in 2115 B.C. 

The peculiarity of Persia, in the political history of 
Eastern empires, is that monarchy appears in an empire 
ruling over many peoples differing widely from each other. 
The several members of the state are allowed a free 
growth, and we find roving nomades existing in one part, 
whilst in other territories commerce and industrial pur¬ 
suits are in full vigor. The coasts of the empire are in 
communication with foreign lands, and the Israelites, 
amidst all the diversities of races and creeds, are allowed 
the free exercise of their own religion. 

Persia was an empire displaying a period of historical 
transition, at the time when the Persian world came in con¬ 
tact with the Greek. The Persian could conquer, but 
could not fuse into one harmonious whole the diverse 
nationalities that fell under his sway. The monarchy 
was thus a loose aggregate of peoples spread over three 
different geographical regions, the highlands of Media 
and Persia, the valley plains of the Euphrates, Tigris, and 
Nile, and the maritime districts in Syria, Phoenicia, and 
Asia Minor. I11 developing civilization Persia’s mission 
was that of bringing to an end the barbarous feuds between 
the nations of the western world of Asia. With a settled 
dominion, comfort, and happiness were diffused, and with 
the growth of wealth, culture, and luxury, the military 
prowess of ruder times declined. Of the calm courage 
of well-ordered civilization the Asiatics had little. Effem¬ 
inacy relaxed their energies as opulence grew, and sensual 


72 ANCIENT AND MEDIAEVAL HISTORY 

indulgence, along with unwieldiness and want of organiza¬ 
tion in such elements of strength as they possessed, made 
them succumb, when the time came, to the superior skill 
and vitality of Greece. The Persians were, in their early 
history, subject to the Medes, but governed by their own 
native princes, called the Achaemenidae, who began to reign 
as semi-independent rulers about B. C. 700. The founder 
of the Persian Empire was Cyrus, who began his career 
of conquest by the defeat and dethronement of Astyages, 
King of Media, in B. C. 558. The Median supremacy 
thus passed to the Persians. 

Master of Media, Cyrus came next into collision with 
the great kingdom of Lydia, in Asia Minor. With its 
capital at Sardis, and extending from the coast of the 
^gean Sea eastwards to the River Halys, Lydia was one 
of the most powerful monarchies of the second class in 
Asiatic history. The Lydians were a highly civilized, 
wealthy, and energetic people, great in agriculture, manu¬ 
factures, commerce, and the arts. In music and metal¬ 
lurgy their names are famous as inventors or improvers; 
they were proverbial in the ancient world for luxury and 
the softer vices that attend it. Crcesus was King of 
Lydia when Cyrus met his attack and conquered him in 
B. C. 546. The rising Empire of Persia was thus extended 
to the western sea-board of Asia Minor. The Greek 
colonies on the coast next fell a prey to the arms of Cyrus, 
and in B.C. 538 he got possession of Babylon, and added 
the provinces of the later Babylonian Empire to the Per¬ 
sian. Before this he had conquered the territory east¬ 
wards between Media and the Indus. The power and life 
alike of Cyrus came to an end in his expedition against the 
Scythian people, called the Massagetse, by whom he was 
defeated and killed in B.C. 529. Cyrus, the greatest King 
among all the Persian monarchs, had spread the Persian 





C Maccari Pinx 


PAPIR1US INSULTED BY THE GAULS 






































THE MEDES AND PERSIANS 


73 

sway from the Hellespont on the west to the Indus on the 
east. 

Cyrus was succeeded by his son Cambyses, who 
reigned from B.C. 529-522, and is distinguished by his 
conquest of Egypt in 525. According to the common ac¬ 
count he was guilty of ferocious and wanton cruelty 
toward the Egyptians and his own family and subjects. 
He stabbed with his own dagger the sacred calf Apis, to 
the horror of the Egyptians; murdered his own brother 
Smerdis, and in several acts displayed something like in¬ 
sanity. Recent researches, however, have shown that the 
character and acts of Cambyses have been greatly misrep¬ 
resented; and instead of outraging the religious feelings 
of the Egyptians he was himself initiated into their 
religion and buried the sacred calf with the usual honors. 
He died in 522, on his march from Egypt against a Magian 
pretender to the throne, who declared himself to be the 
Smerdis put to death by Cambyses. The usurper reigned 
for a few months, and was then dethroned and slain in an 
insurrection headed by Darius Hystaspis, one of the royal 
line of the Achsemenidse. 

Darius Hystaspis, or Darius I, who reigned from B. C. 
521 to 485, finished the work which Cyrus had begun, by 
setting in order the affairs of the vast Empire which 
Cyrus and Cambyses had conquered. The whole terri¬ 
tory was divided into twenty satrapies or governments, 
and a fixed payment was the contribution of each province 
to the expenses of administration. The satrap, or gover¬ 
nor, represented the royal authority, and was charged to 
remit to the King the fixed tribute of the province which 
he ruled. Justice was administered by independent 
officers, called Royal Judges, and a watch was kept upon 
the conduct of the viceroys (satraps) by officials appointed 
for the purpose. The Governors, however, often 


74 ANCIENT AND MEDIEVAL HISTORY 


oppressed the provinces and intrigued against each other. 
The “Great King,” as the Persian monarch was called, 
was held to be the lord of all the land and the water. Thus 
Darius Hystaspis and Xerxes demanded “earth and 
water,” in token of submission, from the Greeks. Tyran¬ 
nical Governors were extortionate in money-matters, but 
there was a general tolerance of all religious faiths, and no 
systematic or outrageous oppression. 

Darius I is credited with the establishment of high¬ 
roads and swift postal communication between the prov¬ 
inces and the court. The Kings of Persia resided in the 
winter at Susa, a warm place in the plain east of the lower 
Tigris; in the summer at Ecbatana, in Media, by the moun¬ 
tains; and Babylon was a third capital of occasional resi¬ 
dence in winter. From these different centers of power 
the Persian monarchs watched, and, according to their 
measure of energy and resolution, controlled the conduct 
of the satraps in every quarter of their wide-spread 
dominions. 

About B. C. 508 Darius invaded Scythia, and, crossing 
the Danube, marched far into the territory which is now 
European Russia, but the expedition ended in a retreat 
without encountering the enemy, and with great loss of 
men from famine. On his return his generals subdued 
Thrace and Macedonia, north of Greece, and added them 
to the Persian Empire. His famous war with the Greeks 
arose out of the revolt of the Ionian Greek cities in Asia 
Minor in 501, and the burning of the city of Sardis by 
their Athenian allies. An expedition sent against Greece 
under the General Mardonius in B. C. 492 was defeated 
by the Thracians on land, and frustrated by a storm in the 
.Tigean Sea. In 490 a great armament was sent by Darius^ 
under Datis and Artaphernes and then was fought the 
decisive battle of Marathon. Darius’ proposed and long- 


THE MEDES AND PERSIANS 


75 


prepared revenge upon the Greeks was baffled by a rebel¬ 
lion in Egypt, and he died in 485, leaving the task to his 
son and successor, Xerxes. 

Xerxes reigned from B. C. 485 to 465, and he began 
with the suppression of the Egyptian revolt in 484, devot¬ 
ing the next four years to preparations against Greece. 
The grand effort was made in 480, and has been ever fam¬ 
ous in history for the magnitude of the host of men and 
ships employed, for the insane display of vanity and 
pageantry by Xerxes, for the heroism of the resistance 
on the one side and the completeness of the final disaster on 
the other. Xerxes himself returned to Sardis, after the 
destruction of his fleet at Salamis, toward the end of the 
year 480. The defeat of his General Mardonius at Platsea 
in 479 ended the war in Greece, and in 478 the Persians 
lost their last foothold in Europe by the capture of Sestos 
on the Hellespont. Of Xerxes little more is known; he 
was assassinated in 465, and left behind him a reputation 
that is proverbial for Oriental vanity and the total failure 
of prodigious efforts. 

After a short usurpation by Artabanus, the assassin of 
Xerxes, the Persian throne was filled by Xerxes’ son, 
Artaxerxes I, surnamed Longimanus, who reigned B. C. 
464-425. The only notable matters in his reign are a 
revolt in Egypt, in which the Athenians assisted the 
Egyptians, and Athenian defeats of the Persians by land 
and sea in and off Cyprus. Darius II, surnamed Nothus, 
son of Artaxerxes I, who reigned B. C. 424-405, was a 
weak personage, who was subjected to constant insurrec¬ 
tions by his satraps, and lost Egypt in 414. His son, 
Artaxerxes II, surnamed Mnemon, reigned 4 ° 5 ~ 359 - 
The period of his rule was eventful. At the beginning 
occurred the revolt of his younger brother Cyrus, satrap 
in Western Asia, who marched against Babylon, and fell 


76 ANCIENT AND MEDIAEVAL HISTORY 

in the battle of Cunaxa, B. C. 401. He was supported by 
a body of Greek mercenaries, whose retiring march to the 
Black Sea over the mountains of Kurdistan has been 
immortalized by Xenophon’s description in his Anabasis, 
and is known as the “Retreat of the Ten Thousand 
Greeks.” After many conflicts between the Persians and 
Greeks, the peace of Antalcidas, concluded in B. C. 387, 
gave to the Persians all the Greek cities in Asia Minor. 
The Persian Empire, however, was now going to decay. 
Artaxerxes failed to recover revolted Egypt, and was con¬ 
stantly at war with tributary Princes and satraps. The 
want of cohesion in the unwieldy ill-assorted aggregate 
of “peoples, nations, and languages” was being severely 
felt. Artaxerxes III, son of the former, succeeded in 
B. C. 359, and reigned till 338. He was a cruel tyrant, 
who did nothing himself for his Empire; but Greek troops 
and generals in his pay reconquered Egypt and other lost 
territories. 

In B. C. 336 the last King of the Persian Empire, 
Darius III, surnamed Codomannus, succeeded to power. 
His struggle with the Greeks is given in the notice of 
Alexander the Great. With the great battle in the plains 
of Gaugamela, in Assyria, known as the battle of Arbela, 
from a town fifty miles distant, where Darius had his head¬ 
quarters before the struggle, the Persian Empire came to 
an end in October, B. C. 331. The defeat of Darius was 
decisive; and in 330 he was murdered in Parthia by one 
of his satraps named Bessus. Asiatic Aryans had suc¬ 
cumbed at last to their kinsmen of Europe, who, after 
repelling Oriental assaults upon the home of a new civiliza¬ 
tion, had carried the arms of avenging ambition into Asia, 
and struck a blow to the heart of the older system of polity, 
culture and power. 

In the doctrine of Zoroaster, pure spirit was worshiped 


THE MEDES AND PERSIANS 


77 


under the form of light. There was no adoration of indi¬ 
vidual natural objects, but of the universe itself. Light 
is the form of the good and the true; it enables man to 
exercise choice, which he can only do when he has emerged 
from darkness. Light involves its opposite—darkness, 
as evil is opposite to good. Among the Persians, 
Ormuzd (called also Auramazda and Oromasdes) and 
Ahriman were the two opposed principles. Ormuzd was 
the lord of the kingdom of light, or good; Ahriman, king 
of the realm of darkness, or evil. Ormuzd is represented 
as to be finally conqueror in contest with Ahriman. 
Ormuzd, as lord of light, created all in the world that is 
beautiful and noble, the world being a kingdom of the 
sun. He is the excellent, the positive, in all natural and 
spiritual existence. Light is the body, or essence, of 
Ormuzd, and hence came the worship of fire, because 
Ormuzd is present in all light; but he is not represented as 
being the sun or moon itself, and this shows the spiritual¬ 
ity of the Persian belief. In the sun or moon the Persians 
worshipped only the light, which is Ormuzd. He was 
held to be the ground and center of all good existence—the 
highest wisdom and knowledge—the destroyer of the ills 
of the world, and the maintainer of the universe. On the 
contrary, the body of Ahriman is darkness, and the per¬ 
petual fire was burned to banish him from the temples. 
The chief end of every man’s existence was held to be to 
keep himself pure, and to spread this purity around him. 
The sacrifices offered were the flesh of clean animals, flow¬ 
ers, fruits, milk, perfumes. Such was the interesting and 
spiritual form of belief held by the best of the ancient 
Persians who extended their sway over so many nations 
of divers faiths and degrees of civilization. The popular 
creed throughout the Empire appears to have been the 


78 ANCIENT AND MEDIAEVAL HISTORY 

religious system of the Magians, referred to in the account 
of the Medes. The priests, or Magi, had great power, 
from the reverence of the people for them. The great 
objects of worship were the heavenly bodies. This 
national priesthood, like the Chaldseans in the Babylonian 
Empire, formed a caste to whom belonged all mental cul¬ 
ture, and all knowledge of art, science and legislation. 
The modern term of reproach “magic,” in its superstitious 
sense, is connected with their professions of divination and 
pretence at acquirement of hidden knowledge by the rais¬ 
ing of the dead and by juggling with cups and water. 

In science, art and learning the Persians developed lit¬ 
tle or nothing that was new, except in architecture. In 
the conquest of the Assyrians, Babylonians, Phoenicians, 
and Egyptians, the Persian King and nobles came into pos¬ 
session alike of the scientific acquirements and learning of 
those peoples, and of the products of the mechanical arts 
which are concerned in the luxuries and comforts of life. 
The Persians were soldiers, and not craftsmen, and had no 
need to be producers, when they could be purchasers, of 
the carpets and muslins of Babylon and Sardis, the fine 
linen of Egypt, and the rich variety of wares that Phoeni¬ 
cian commerce spread throughout the Empire. In archi¬ 
tecture they were at first pupils of the Assyrians and Baby¬ 
lonians. The splendid palaces and temples of Nineveh and 
Babylon had existed for centuries before the Persians were 
anything more than a hardy tribe of warriors, and it was 
only after the acquirement of Imperial sway that they 
began to erect great and elegant buildings for themselves. 
When that time came, the Persians showed that they could 
produce, by adaptation of older models, an architectural 
style of their own. This style was one that comes between 
the sombre, massive grandeur of Assyrian and Egyptian 


THE MEDES AND PERSIANS 


79 


edifices and the perfect symmetry and beauty of the 
achievements of Greek art. Palaces and tombs, not tem¬ 
ples, were the masterpieces of Persian building, as the out¬ 
door worship of the sun, or of the sacred fire kindled on 
some lofty spot, required no gorgeous “temples made with 
hands” for the indwelling of the God who was adored 
either in spirit or in the luminous manifestations of his 
power in the heavens above. The ruins of the city of 
Persepolis, in the province of Persia, are the most famous 
remains of Persian architecture. Here, on a terraced plat¬ 
form, stood vast and splendid palaces, “with noble portals 
and sweeping staircases, elegant fretted work for decora¬ 
tion, rows of massive pillars, and sumptuous halls.” The 
doorways are adorned with beautiful bas-reliefs, and the 
great double staircase leading up to the “Palace of Forty 
Pillars” is especially rich in sculptured human figures. 
The columns are beautiful in form, sixty feet in total 
height, with the shaft finely fluted, and the pedestal in the 
form of the cup and leaves of a pendent lotus. Through¬ 
out the ruins a love of ornament and display is visible. 
In the bas-reliefs are profuse decorations of fretwork 
fringes, borders of sculptured bulls and lions, and stone¬ 
work of carved roses. The ruins, as a whole, present a 
complicated spectacle of fallen magnificence. 

Ecbatana, formerly the capital of the Median Empire, 
called Achmetha in the book of Ezra, and supposed to be 
the modern Hamadon, was a very ancient city, surrounded 
by seven walls, each overtopping the one outside it, and 
surmounted by battlements painted in five different colors, 
the innermost two being overlaid with silver and with 
gold. The strong citadel inside all was used as the royal 
treasury. Susa, called Shushan by the Hebrew writers 
Daniel and Nehemiah, was a square-built city unprotected 


8 o ANCIENT AND MEDIAEVAL HISTORY 


by walls, but having a strongly fortified citadel, containing 
a royal palace and treasury. The only remains of the 
place are extensive mounds, on which are found fragments 
of bricks and broken pottery with cuneiform inscriptions. 
Persepolis was one of the two burial-places of the Persian 
Kings, and also a royal treasury. Darius I and Xerxes 
greatly enlarged and adorned the place, and it retained 
its splendor till it was partially burned by Alexander the 
Great. Pasargada, the other royal place of burial, its 
site having still the tomb oi Cyrus and a colossal bas-relief 
sculpture of the great founder of the monarchy, was either 
southeast or northeast of Persepolis, the tomb of Cyrus 
appearing to settle the site as at Murghab, in the north¬ 
eastern position. Sardis, in western Asia Minor, once 
the capital of the Lydian monarchy, was the residence of 
the satrap of Lydia, and often occurs in history in con¬ 
nection with the presence of the Persian Kings. It had 
an almost impregnable citadel placed on a lofty precipitous 
rock. 

Of ancient Persian literature there are scarcely any 
remains except the sacred books in the collection called the 
Zendavesta. The splendor of Persian life at court and 
abroad is known to us from many sources. The sculptures 
of Persepolis show something of the state and ceremony 
attendant on a Persian King. In the book of Esther we 
read of King Ahasuerus (who is identified as Xerxes) 
entertaining all “the nobles and Princes of the provinces” 
for “a hundred and fourscore days,” of his making a feast 
for seven days “in the court of the garden of the King’s 
palace” for all the people of Susa; of pillars of marble, sil¬ 
ver curtain-rings, beds of gold and silver, pavements of 
marble that was red, and blue, and white, and black; of 
drink in vessels of gold diverse in shape and size, and 


THE MEDES AND PERSIANS 


81 


“royal wine in abundance, according to the state of the 
Kingof garments of purple and fine linen; and of the 
absolute power of a Persian despot in his caprices and hia 
wrath, with his “seven chamberlains that served in his 
presence,” and with the lives of men and women of ail 
ranks held in the hollow of his hand. 

Voi^ i—6 


HISTORY OF GREECE 


The part played by Greece in the great drama of Uni¬ 
versal History makes her a connecting link between East 
and West, the Asiatic and the European, the enslaved and 
the free. Grecian history is one of the greatest phases of 
the question between East and West, alive in the politics of 
the present day, when the recovery of Constantinople for 
Europe is a great matter for European diplomacy. 

A review of Greek history from the earliest times, 
including a period legendary in detail, but having a basis 
of fact, will enable us to judge of the place of Greece in 
history, and the vital connection existing between the 
ancient and modern worlds. The story of the war of 
Troy, embellished by poetry with marvels, is a legendary 
version of some part of the contest between East and West. 
After this comes the colonial period, when the Greek makes 
inroads on the commercial dominion of Phoenicia and a 
part of Asia practically becomes Europe by the settling of 
Greek cities on the coasts of Asia Minor. Then the 
powers of the East, embattled by Persia, advance in their 
turn. Asiatic Greece is conquered, European Greece is 
threatened, and at last has to fight for life on her own 
soil. By sea and by land Greece is triumphant, and the 
future of cilivilization is settled. Whatever the fate of 
Europe is to be she is not to be handed over to the grasp 
of Oriental despotism, but is to be left to struggle forward 
in a career uninfluenced by Eastern control. Then Greece, 
after reaching the highest point of culture in art and litera¬ 
ture, is weakened by internal dissensions, and loses ground 
both in East and West. Pier old foe, Persia, regains some 

82 


1 


HISTORY OF GREECE 


S3 


of her former power on the seaboard of Asia Minor; in 
the West, Greek dominion is lessened by the rising power 
of Carthage and Rome, and the last effort of Greece for 
political dominion there fails when the phalanx of Pyrrhus 
succumbs to the Roman legion. Then the Macedonian 
King, Alexander the Great, reconquers the East and 
spreads Greek culture and an artificial Greek nationality 
over a large part of the world. Into this new Greek world^ 
Rome forces her way, and at once secures political suprem¬ 
acy. Rome, however, never supplants the tongue and cul¬ 
ture of Greece, but largely accepts them herself until much 
of her own power is transferred to a Greek city, Constanti¬ 
nople. Hence, at the revival of learning, the products of 
the old Greek mind come forth to transform the Western 
world. 

The interest of the great story of ancient Greece is 
really inexhaustible. It has been well said that “of all 
histories of which we know so much, this is the most 
abounding in consequences to us who now live. The true 
ancestors of the European nations are not those from 
whose blood they are sprung, but those from whom they 
derive the richest portion of their inheritance. The battle 
of Marathon, even as an event in English history, is more 
important than the battle of Hastings. If the issue of that 
day had been different, the Britons and the Saxons might 
still have been wandering in the woods. The Greeks are 
also the most remarkable people who have yet existed.” 
This high claim is justly made on the grounds of the power 
and efforts that were required for them to achieve what 
they did for themselves and for mankind. With the ex¬ 
ception of Christianity, they were the beginners of nearly 
everything of which the modern world can boast. By 
their own unaided exertions they, alone among the nations 
of the earth, emerged from barbarism. Tt was they who 


84 ANCIENT AND MEDIAEVAL HISTORY 

originated political freedom and first produced an histori¬ 
cal literature, and that a perfect one of its kind. The same 
wonderful race rose to the height of excellence in oratory, 
poetry, sculpture, architecture. They were the founders 
of mathematics, of physical science, of true political 
science, of the philosophy of human nature and life. In 
each of these departments of skilled and systematic 
acquirement they made for themselves those first steps on 
which all the rest depend. Freedom of thought they be¬ 
stowed on the world, a heritage for all ages to come. 
Unfettered by pedantries or superstitions, they looked the 
universe in the face, and questioned nature in that free, 
bold spirit of speculation which has worked with so power¬ 
ful an effect in modern Europe. All these things the 
Greeks achieved in two centuries of national existence, and 
the twenty Centuries that have passed away since the 
Greeks were the most gifted of the nations of the world 
have added little, in comparison, to human attainments and 
human development on the intellectual side of our nature. 
Such, in its extreme form, is the claim advanced for the 
Greeks of old. What is certain is, that, even if they 
received the rudiments of art and literature, and the germs 
of political and social organization, from Eastern nations 
—from Asia Minor, Egypt and Phoenicia—they impressed 
a new and original character on that which they received. 

The Greeks would not endure absolute monarchy; 
from constitutional Kings they passed to republican insti¬ 
tutions in an infinite variety of forms as compounded in 
various degrees of democratic or oligarchic elements. In 
literature and science the Greek intellect followed no beaten 
track, and acknowledged no limitary rules. The Greeks 
thought their subjects boldly out, and the novelty of a 
speculation invested it in their minds with interest, and 
not with criminality. Versatile, restless, enterprising, and 


HISTORY OF GREECE 


S5 

self-confident, they presented the most striking contrast to 
the habitual quietude and submissiveness of the Orientals. 
Such was the people whose history we are now to deal with 
in a rapid summary of their rise, their fortunes, their 
institutions, and their political decline and fall. We pass 
from the Oriental history of dynasties and barren conquests 
to the history of a free nation exercising, through her intel¬ 
lectual triumphs, an enduring dominion over Europe and 
the whole civilized world. 

The Greeks belonged to the great Aryan branch of the 
Caucasian race—to the stock that includes all the historic 
nations of Europe, the Latins, Teutons or Germans, Celts, 
and Slavonians, as well as the Persians and Hindoos of 
Asia. The Aryan migration from Asia into Europe, 
brought the forefathers of the Greeks into the farthest east 
of the three Mediterranean peninsulas. It is in the south¬ 
ern part of this peninsula, in the Peloponnesus, called in 
modern geography the Morea, and in the territory immedi¬ 
ately north of the Peloponnesus, that we are to look, in 
ancient history, for the people who were strictly and truly 
Greeks, apart from the colonies which were settled on vari¬ 
ous parts of the islands and coasts of the east and central 
Mediterranean, and of the neighboring seas, the Propontis 
(Sea of Marmora), and the Euxine (now Black) Sea. 
The name Greece was almost unknown by the people whom 
we call Greeks, and was never used by them for their own 
country. It has come to us from the Romans, being really 
the name of a tribe in Epirus, northwest of Greece, the part 
of the country first known to them. The Greek writers 
and people called their land Hellas, the term meaning, 
however, all territory in which their own people, whom 
they called Hellenes, were settled. Hellas, therefore, 
included not only the Greek peninsula, but many of the 
islands of the ^Egean Sea, and the coast settlement and 


86 ANCIENT AND MEDIEVAL HISTORY 


colonies above referred to. Hellas was originally the 
name of a district in Thessaly, in northern Greece, the 
people of which gradually spread over the neighboring ter¬ 
ritory, and the name was in time adopted by the other 
tribes. 

Greece consisted, geographically, of many islands, and 
of a peninsula much indented by bays. It was thus broken 
up into many small divisions, connected by the sea. There 
were numerous mountains in ridges, off-shoots, and 
groups; there were plains, valleys, and small rivers. All 
was diversified; there was no great feature. The position 
and conformation of the country undoubtedly helped to 
render the Greeks the earliest civilized people in Europe, 
both by developing, in a life of struggle with nature on 
land and sea, their special and innate character, and by 
bringing them into contact with the older civilizations, in 
Egypt and Phoenicia, on the eastern shores of the Medi¬ 
terranean. The mountains that divided the country into 
small isolated districts had a great political importance in 
giving rise to many separate and independent states, the 
rivalries and conflicts of which favored the working out of 
political problems and the growth of political freedom. 
Greece naturally divides itself into Northern, Central and 
Southern. Northern Greece extends from the northern 
boundary line in about 40 degrees north latitude to a line 
drawn from the Ambracian Gulf on the west to Ther¬ 
mopylae on the east. Central Greece stretches from this 
point to the isthmus of Corinth. Southern Greece in¬ 
cludes the Peloponnesus and adjacent islands. Northern 
Greece contained two principal countries, Thessalia and 
Epirus, though the Greeks themselves did not regard the 
inhabitants of Epirus as being of real Hellenic race. It 
was only in later times that Macedonia, north of Thessalia, 
was considered a part of Hellas. Central Greece had nine 


HISTORY OF GREECE 


»7 


separate states-—Acarnania, HLtolia, Doris, Eastern 
Locris, Western Locris, Phocis, Boeotia, Attica and Meg- 
aris. The most important of these was Attica, the penin¬ 
sula jutting out southeastward from Boeotia, and re¬ 
nowned for evermore through its possession of the city of 
Athens. Southern Greece, or the Peloponnesus, meaning 
“island of Pelops,” a mythical King of Pisa, in Elis, con¬ 
tained seven principal states—Corinth, Achaia, Elis, Arca¬ 
dia, Messenia, Argolis, and Laconia. Of these the most 
important was Laconia, equally famous as Attica for 
Athens in containing the city of Sparta, capital of the state 
called Lacedaemon, forming the southern part of Laconia. 
Islands formed a considerable and famous part of ancient 
Hellas. The largest of the islands on the coast was 
Euboea, about ninety miles in length, noted for good pas¬ 
turage and corn. On the west coast was the group known 
to modern geography as “the Ionian Isles/’ To the south 
lay Crete, 160 miles in length, noted for the skill of its 
archers. In the H/gean Sea were the two groups called 
the Cyclades and Sporades. The Cyclades, or “circling 
isles,” as lying round the chief one, Delos, are clearly 
shown upon the map. The Sporades, or “scattered isles,” 
lay to the east, off the southwest coast of Asia Minor, 
northward in the ^Egean, in mid-sea, or on the Asiatic 
coast, were Lemnos, Scyros, Lesbos, Chios, and Samos. 

Of the date when the Aryan tribes first made their way 
into the Greek peninsula and islands we know nothing, 
from the lack of records. As a prehistoric people in that 
region, we hear of the Pelasgi, akin to the Greeks in lan¬ 
guage and in race, so far as we can judge, and said to have 
known agriculture and other useful arts. The Aryans,, 
before they set out on their migrations into Europe from 
their primeval home in Asia, possessed a certain degree 
of culture, and the Pelasgi, being Aryans, would have car- 


8 S ANCIENT and medieval history 


ried those acquirements with them to their new abodes. 
The Pelasgians formed the basis of the older population 
both in Italy and Greece, according to the evidence of lan¬ 
guage and the researches of scholars. The so-called 
Pelasgic, or Cyclopean, remains at Mycenae and at Tiryns, 
both in Argolis, consisting of huge rude masses of stone, 
piled on each other in tiers, without cement, resemble the 
Stonehenge in the mystery existing as to their real author¬ 
ship and age. As with the Pelasgi, so with the Hellenes 
—of the date when, and means by which, they became pre¬ 
dominant in the land which they called Hellas, we know 
nothing. The safest conjecture is that the Hellenes were 
the flower for enterprise, ability, and courage, of some 
section of the Aryan immigrants into Europe, just as the 
Normans were the choicest specimens of Scandinavian 
tribes in mediaeval Europe. These superior qualities gave 
the Hellenes possession, at an early date, of the territory 
in which they found established the Pelasgians, really akin 
in blood and language to themselves, but men whom the 
Hellenes, innocent of ethnology and comparative phil¬ 
ology, called “barbarians,” or men of different language to 
themselves. It is certain that, as far back as history or 
even legend can carry us, we find the land of Greece in the 
occupation of a branch of the Aryan family, consisting, 
like all other nations, of various kindred tribes. 

Of these Hellenes, then, who occupied the land, and 
made it famous for all time, there were four chief divi¬ 
sions, the Dorians, ^Eolians, Achaeans and Ionians. At a 
date probably as early as 1200 B. C., the Dorians are found 
in the northern part of Central Greece, in and about Doris, 
on the southern slope of Mount CEta; the ^olians mainly 
in Thessalia; the Achaeans in the west, south and east of 
Peloponnesus, where the Arcadians, probably descendants 
of the Pelasgi, occupied the center of the territory; and the 



GREEKS RETURNING AFTER THE BATTLE OF SALAMIS 

Painting by F. Cormon 








































/ 












' 






















HISTORY OF GREECE 


89 


Ionians in the northeastern Peloponnesus and in Attica. 
The Dolopes, ^Enianes, Magnetes, Dryopes and Danai, 
are the names of tribes, Pelasgic and otherwise in origin* 
occupying parts of the territory of Greece at the same early 
date. 

We are dealing with history, not legend, and therefore 
with the mythical exploits of the so-called Heroic Age we 
have nothing to do, except so far as those legends may be 
considered to embody a real kernel of historical truth. 
We have space here to allude only to two, and those the 
most famous, of these legends—the Argonautic Expedi¬ 
tion and the Siege of Troy. The Argonauts are repre¬ 
sented as a body of heroes who went in a ship called the 
Argo, under the command of a prince named Jason, to 
fetch from Colchis, a district on the eastern coast of the 
Pontus Euxinus, a golden fleece hung on an oak tree in 
the grove of Ares, Greek god of war, and guarded there 
by a dragon. After many adventures, losses and dangers, 
the fleece was carried off. The kernel of truth here is 
that in very early times navigators went to the coasts of 
the Euxine and there made money by trade with wild 
inhospitable tribes. 

The Siege of Troy or Trojan War is known to all the 
civilized world from Homer’s poem called the Iliad. 
Paris, the son of Priam, King of Troy, is represented as 
having carried off from Greece, Helen, the wife of his 
entertainer, Menelaus, King of Lacedaeman. Helen was 
the loveliest woman of her time, and all the Grecian princes 
took up arms and sailed for Troy, under command of Aga¬ 
memnon, King of Mycenae, in Argolis. The greatest hero 
on the Greek side was Achilles, on the Trojan, Hector. 
After a ten-years’ siege and much slaughter Troy is taken 
by a stratagem and burned, and the remaining princes and 
their peoples return to Greece. The Iliad deals only with 


90 ANCIENT AND MEDIAEVAL HISTORY 

the events of the last year of the war, “the wrath of 
Achilles” and its results, when Achilles, offended by Aga¬ 
memnon, for a long time refuses to fight, and leaves the 
Greeks a prey to the prowess of Hector. When Patroclus, 
a friend of Achilles, is slain by the Trojan hero, the Greek 
warrior takes up his spear again, slays Hector, and the 
story ends, in Homer’s poem, with the delivery of his body 
to the sorrowing father, Priam. Plow much of this is 
fact and how much fiction is not known. The matter long 
has been, and it remains, a battleground of angry and 
bewildered critics. The truth contained in the Homeric 
poems, the Iliad and the Odyssey is this, that they give 
a real and valuable picture of the state of civilization in 
the Grecian world at the time when the poems were writ¬ 
ten or otherwise composed and preserved, which we may 
take to be abouc 1000 years B. C. 

The form of government was that of a hereditary 
King, acting as priest, general, judge, and president of the 
popular assembly, supported and guided by a council of 
elders. The tribe or nation appears as more important 
than the city, which, in historical Greece, is found to be 
itself the state. We find existing a landed aristocracy, an 
elementary middle class of bards, priests, prophets, sur¬ 
geons, and skilled artisans, a class of hired workmen, and 
another class of mildly-treated slaves. A state of warfare 
was almost constant between some two or more of the vari¬ 
ous tribes, and military prowess was the virtue most 
esteemed. There was no polygamy, and woman, and 
especially the wife, was held in high regard. Care for the 
young and reverence for the old were practiced. A gen¬ 
eral sobriety in drink and bodily indulgence, and a chival¬ 
rous feeling of respect for self and others, are found to 
exist. The belief in various deities, whose attributes were 
those of a glorified humanity, and in fatalism, was strong. 


HISTORY OF GREECE 


9 i 

Sacrifices of slaughtered animals, and of outpoured wine, 
were offered to the gods. 

The artistic works described were not of Grecian exe¬ 
cution, but Phoenician chiefly. Men’s chief occupations 
in the Homeric times were in agriculture, as ploughmen, 
sowers, and reapers; and in pastoral life, as cowdierds, 
shepherds, swineherds, and goatherds. There were 
wagons drawn by mules, and chariots drawn by horses, as 
appliances of war. The weapons, defensive and offensive, 
were the shield, the helmet, the breastplate, and greaves, or 
metal leggings, from the knee to the ankle; the sword, the 
spear, the javelin, ax, and huge stones hurled by mighty 
arms at the oncoming foe. We read of coppersmiths, 
carpenters, and shipbuilders; eating of beef and mutton, 
bread and cheese; of spinning and weaving of flax and 
wool for clothing, carpets, coverlets, and rugs. Such is 
the state of things represented to us in the poems which 
enshrine the legend of the tale of Troy—that legend which, 
“set forth in the full blaze of epic poetry, exercised a 
powerful and imperishable influence over the Hellenic 
mind.” 

There is another class of legends concerning the 
earlier times of Greece, in which we find asserted the recep¬ 
tion by the Greeks of foreign immigration from Egypt 
and Phoenicia. The element of truth contained in these 
traditions is that early Greece did receive something from 
Egypt, and much, perhaps, from the Phoenicians, when 
Greeks began to spread themselves over the isles and coasts 
to east and south and west of their own land, and thus came 
into contact with those great traders, the Phoenicians, who 
preceded Greece in spreading culture and commerce on the 
coasts of the great inland sea. What rudiments of art, or 
science, or religion Greece may have got from Egypt is 
matter of conjecture only; certain it is that Greece owed 


9 3 


ANCIENT AND MEDIAEVAL HISTORY 


infinitely more to native genius than to any outward 
sources of civilization. 

Grecian history may be divided into four periods. 
From the Dorian migration to the First Olympiad, the 
beginning of the authentic history of Greece, B. C. 1104- 
77 <S. 

From B. C. 776 to the beginning of the Persian Wars, 
B. C. 500. 

From the beginning of the Persian Wars to the sub¬ 
jugation of Greece by Philip of Macedon, B. C. 5 00 " 33 ^* 

From the subjugation of Greece by Philip of Macedon 
to the Roman conquest, B. C. 338-146. 

THE GREEK CITY-STATES 

Leaving the dim twilight of legendary Greece, we come 
to a period when there took place those movements of 
tribes that resulted in settling the Hellenes in those parts 
of Hellas in which we find them during the times of 
authentic history. The chief of these movements was that 
known as the Dorian Migration or Return of the Hera- 
clidne, this latter name following the legend that the de¬ 
scendants of the demigod Heracles (Hercules), called 
Heraclidae, after being driven from the Peloponnesus, re¬ 
turned thither in alliance with the Dorians. The event 
thus referred to is really the Conquest of the Peloponnesus 
by the Dorians, and the date assigned to it is B. C. 1104, 
about eighty years after the supposed date of the legendary 
Trojan War. The germ of historical truth in the mat¬ 
ter is that, about B. C. 1100, the Dorians, under various 
leaders, made their way from their abodes in Central 
Greece into the Peloponnesus, and conquered the greater 
part of the peninsula after a long and severe contest with 
the Achaeans and others who were established there. All 


HISTORY OF GREECE 


93 


Peloponnesus, except Arcadia and the part called after¬ 
ward Achaia, became Dorian, including the Kingdoms of 
Sparta, Argos, and Messenia, Elis being occupied, it is 
said, by ^Etolian allies of the Dorians. This great move¬ 
ment led to other changes in the Hellenic world. Of the 
Achseans in the Peloponnesus some were subdued and 
remained in the land as an inferior class, tilling the soil 
as tenants under Dorian lords. Other Achoeans, expelled 
from the south and east of the peninsula, fell back upon the 
northern coast, inhabited by the Ionians, whom they drove 
out into Attica and other parts of Central Greece. From 
this time the Peloponnesus was mainly Dorian, the Ionians 
being dominant in Central Greece and many islands of the 
H^gean Sea. 

The Dorian conquest was succeeded by the planting of 
numerous colonies on the west coast of Asia Minor and 
in the neighboring islands of the iEgean Sea. These col¬ 
onies were settled by the three races, the H^olians, Ionians 
and Dorians. The ^Eolians colonized the northwestern 
part, the coast of Mysia, and the island of Lesbos. Of 
their confederation of twelve cities in that region the chief 
were Methymna and Mytilene, Cyme and Smyrna, which 
last was, early in the historical period, taken by the Ionians. 
The Ionians settled in the central part, on the coast of 
Lydia, and in the islands of Chios and Samos. Of their 
powerful confederation of twelve cities the chief were 
Phocsea, Miletus and Ephesus. The Dorians occupied the 
southwest corner of Asia Minor and the adjacent islands. 
Of the six Dorian states the chief were the islands of Cos, 
Thera, and Rhodes, and the cities of Cnidus and Hali¬ 
carnassus. Of all these confederations by far the most 
important, wealthy and powerful was the Ionian. 

Gradually the Greeks spread themselves in settlements 
along the northern coast of the ^gean Sea and the Pro- 


94 ANCIENT AND MEDIAEVAL HISTORY 

pontis, in Macedonia and Thrace, so that the whole ^Egean 
became encircled with Greek colonies, and its islands were 
covered with them. The need of room and the tempta¬ 
tions of commerce drew colonists even to the northern 
and southern shores of the Euxine Sea, the Ionians of 
Miletus being the founders of many settlements in that 
region, including the greatest of them all, Sinope. The 
tide of emigration flowed westward also in great strength. 
The coasts of Southern Italy were occupied by Dorians, 
Achaeans, and Ionians in settlements which grew to such 
importancce that the region took the name of Magna 
Graecia, or Greater Greece. The cities of Tarentum, Cro¬ 
ton and Sybaris became famous for their wealth, the latter 
giving rise to the proverbial name for a luxurious liver. 
On the southwestern coast of Italy was Rhegium, and 
further north came Paestum, Cumae and Neapolis, Naples. 
In Sicily flourishing Greek settlements abounded, the chief 
being Messana, Syracuse, Leontini, Catana, Gela, Selinus 
and Agrigentum. Farther west still a colony from 
Phocaea, in Asia Minor, founded the city of Massilia, 
known now to all the world as Marseilles. On the south¬ 
ern coast of the Mediterranean, westward from Egypt, 
the Greek colony of Cyrene became the chief town of a 
flourishing district called Cyrenaica. It must be under¬ 
stood that the establishment of the later of these colonies 
brings us down well within authentic historical times, and 
that the whole period of Greek colonization extends from 
about B. C. i ioo to 600, the colonies being in many cases 
offshoots of colonies previously established and risen to 
wealth and over-population. In all these movements and 
settlements the enterprise and ability of the Greeks made 
them great commercial rivals to, and, in a measure, suc¬ 
cessors of the Phoenicians. 

The two leading races of Greece were the Ionians and 


HISTORY OF GREECE 


95 


the Dorians, and they stand to each other in a strong con¬ 
trast of character which largely affected Greek political 
history. These prominent points of difference run 
through the whole historical career of the two chief states, 
• Ionian Athens and Dorian Sparta, and were the cause of 
‘the strong antagonism that we find so often in action 
between them. The Dorian was distinguished by sever¬ 
ity, bluntness, simplicity of life, conservative ways, and 
oligarchic tendency in politics; the Ionian was equally 
marked by vivacity, excitability, refinement, love of 
change, taste in the arts, commercial enterprise, and 
attachment to democracy. The Dorian, in the best times 
of his history, reverenced age, ancient usage, and religion; 
the Ionian, at all periods of his career, loved enjoyment, 
novelty and enterprise. 

In the kingly government of the Heroic Age—the mon¬ 
arch was “the first among his peers, the small rude noble 
of a small Hellenic town.” His power was preserved by 
respect for his high lineage, traced to the gods in legend¬ 
ary song, and by the warlike prowess which he knew how, 
on occasion, to display. At about 900 B. C. an important 
change had taken place in the form of government of most 
of the states. Kingly rule had passed into republican, and 
the people were gathered into little separate states enjoy¬ 
ing various degrees of freedom according to the aristo¬ 
cratic or democratic nature of the constitution, though at 
first these commonwealths were mostly aristocracies, in 
which “only men of certain families were allowed to fill 
public offices and to take part in the assemblies by which 
the city was governed.” In the democracies all citizens 
could hold offices and speak and vote at the assemblies for 
legislative and executive business. In Sparta alone did 
the office and title of King remain. 

The Greeks were, politically, parcelled and divided into 


96 ANCIENT AND MEDIAEVAL HISTORY 

many different states, but there existed still a national bond 
of union. All were of Hellenic race—Ionians, Dorians, 
^Eolians—and, in certain dialectic varieties, they had a 
common speech which distinguished them at once from 
the “barbarians” of strange and unintelligible tongue, as 
well as a common literature, religion, rites, temples, and 
festivals equally open to all. The great feeling of every 
Greek, however, was for his native city, and the bane of 
the Hellenic race was the political dissension existing be¬ 
tween the rival parties in the same state, and the jealous 
antagonism rife between different states endowed with 
different forms of republican constitution. The only sys¬ 
tem which can bind together firmly into one great state a 
number of independent smaller communities of democratic 
government is that of Federal Union, with which modern 
times are familiar both in Europe and America. In 
Greece the principle was discovered and acted on too late 
to have a chance of saving her from the overwhelming 
power of Rome. 

The Dorian conquest of the Peloponnesus had made 
Dorians supreme, in three states of that peninsula—Argos, 
Messenia and Laconia, about noo B. C., and in time the 
Spartans, or the people of Lacedaemon, properly the south¬ 
ern half of Laconica or Laconia, became the dominant 
nation in that part of Greece. Of Spartan doings and 
fortunes we know almost nothing until the time of the 
great legislator Lycurgus, whose date cannot be put later 
than B. C. 825. The state of things in Laconia established 
by the Dorian conquest was a very peculiar one. The 
population included, when Sparta was settled into a regu¬ 
lar political community, three distinct classes. There 
were the Spartiatae or Spartans, the Dorian conquerors 
residing in Sparta, the chief city of the land; the Perioeci, 
“dwellers-round,” who were old Achaean inhabitants, trib- 


HISTORY OF GREECE 


97 


utary tc the Spartans, forming the free dwellers in the 
provincial towns, having no political rights or share in the 
government; and the Helots, who also were a part of the 
old Achseans, but such as had been made into slaves, to till 
the soil for the individual members of the ruling class or 
Spartiatse, to whom they were allotted, paying a fixed rent 
to their masters. The Periceci paid a rent to the state for 
the land which they held, but were, personally, free mem- 
bers of the community. There was a large number of the 
Helots, and they were constantly treated by the Spartans 
with a harshness and a cruelty (extending to the frequent 
infliction of death) which have made the word “Helot” 
proverbial for a downtrodden miserable outcast. The 
Spartans were thus in the position of a powerful garrison 
in a hostile country, being surrounded, in the Periceci, by 
those who had no political interest in the maintenance of 
Spartan supremacy, and, in the Helots, by those whom fear 
and force alone restrained from rising to massacre their 
oppressors. Considering these circumstances, we can well 
understand the growth in the Spartan citizens of that hard¬ 
ness of character and hardihood of temperament for which 
they became a byword through all ages. 

Lycurgus, of whom, as a personage, nothing certainly 
historical is known, was the legislator who, about 850 
B. C., organized the existing elements of society into the 
famous Spartan constitution, though all parts of the sys¬ 
tem must not be attributed to a man whose existence has 
been denied by some historians. The probability is that he 
altered and reformed existing usages, and that the rever¬ 
ence of after-ages ascribed to him the promulgation and 
establishment of a full-grown brand-new set of institutions 
which must have been, in many points, of gradual growth. 

The government was that of an aristocratic republic 

under the form of a monarchy. There were two Kings, 
Voi,. 1 — 7 


93 ANCIENT AND MEDIAEVAL HISTORY 

whose powers were nominally those of high-priests, judges 
and leaders in war, but in the two latter capacities their 
functions were in time greatly restricted and almost super¬ 
seded. The chief legislative and judicial, and much of 
the executive, power lay with the Senate, or council of 
twenty-eight elders. No citizen could be a member of 
this body until he had become sixty years of age, and the 
office was held for life. The popular assembly, open to 
every Spartan citizen over thirty years old, really handed 
over its powers to a board of five commissioners, officers 
called Ephors (meaning “overseers”), whom it annually 
elected. These high officials had a secret and irresponsible 
control over the executive power, both at home and abroad, 
and in military enterprises, where the Kings were the 
nominal leaders, the two Ephors who accompanied the 
army exercised much influence. The whole body of 
Spartan citizens was an aristocracy, as regarded their sub¬ 
jects, the Perioeci, and amongst themselves entire political 
equality existed. 

The object of the peculiar institutions of Sparta and of 
the peculiar training of Spartan citizens, ascribed to 
Lycurgus, was the maintenance of Spartan supremacy 
over the subject population. It was necessary for safety 
that the small body of men, said to have numbered 9,000 
in the days of Lycurgus, surrounded by enemies in their 
own land, should be ready at all points, in complete effi¬ 
ciency, against every attempt at opposition or rebellion. 
Sparta, against the rest of Laconia, and against the out¬ 
side world, if need were, had to be “all sting,” and at this 
result the Spartan institutions aimed, with eminent suc¬ 
cess. 

As every man had to be a soldier, and the citizen 
existed only for the state, the state took the Spartan citizen 
in hand at his birth, and regulated him almost from the 


HISTORY OF GREECE 


99 


cradle to the grave. Weakly and malformed infants were 
at once exposed and left to die of hunger. Up to the age 
of seven the male children were left to their Spartan 
mothers, who were not likely to treat them with overmuch 
indulgence, and were then taken from home and trained to 
the hardiest of lives by educators appointed by the state. 
k The Spartan citizen was regarded as nothing but a tool 
of the state, and every means was used to give the instru¬ 
ment the finest temper, in a physical sense, and to bring it 
to the sharpest edge. The system was that of a huge 
public school or university in which nothing was culti¬ 
vated except the body, and nothing esteemed except ath¬ 
letic sports and military training. The frugal fare pro¬ 
vided was eaten in messes or companies at public tables, 
for which each citizen contributed a share of the expense. 
This training lasted till the sixtieth year of life, when 
the Spartan became qualified by age, if not by wisdom, 
for election to the Gerousia, “assembly of old men,” or 
Senate. To bear extremes of hunger and thirst, and heat 
and cold, and bodily torture, and to steal without detection, 
under certain license and regulation, were the virtues of 
youthful Spartans. The girls were trained in athletic 
exercises like those of the youths, and all was done, that 
could be done, to rear a race of vigorous women, hardy in 
frame and stern of mood, prepared to gladly see their sons 
die on the battlefield for Sparta. Thus were created in the 
citizens unrivaled habits of obedience, self-denial, hardi¬ 
hood, and military aptitude; complete subjection on the 
part of each individual to the local public opinion, and 
preference of death to the abandonment of Spartan max¬ 
ims; intense ambition on the part of everyone to distin¬ 
guish himself within the prescribed sphere of duties, with 
little ambition for anything else. It is needless to 
say that at Sparta we look in vain for any attain- 


' • > 


zoo 


ANCIENT AND MEDLEYAL HISTORY 


ments in literature and the arts; the genius of the 
Dorian race lay in a different direction, and the 
Spartan training would have stifled any abilities or 
aspirations that might have existed for a higher culture 
than that of the gymnasium and the drill-ground. Ora¬ 
tory was despised, and Spartan wisdom and philosophy 
had for their only vent the utterance of the sayings called, 
in their blunt brevity, laconic. The Spartan citizen was 
not allowed to work at any handicraft, to till the ground, 
or to practice commerce, and the money used was made of 
iron, in order to confine trading to transactions of absolute 
necessity. The result of all was that the Spartans became 
a race of well-drilled and intrepid warriors, but a nation 
basely distinguished in the history of Greece for the dis¬ 
play, in other countries, of a domineering arrogance, a 
rapacity, and a corruption, which contributed not a little 
to her downfall. It must be admitted, however, that the 
Spartan institutions were very successful in giving her 
security at home and success in war abroad. Sparta was 
free from domestic revolutions, and the spectacle she pre¬ 
sented of constancy to her maxims of policy gave her a 
great ascendency over the Hellenic mind. 

The Athenians became by far the most famous, in 
political ascendency and in artistic and intellectual emi¬ 
nence, of all the Ionian race to which they belonged, and 
it was in Athens that democratic freedom was ultimately 
carried further than in any other state of Greece. Little 
that is certain is known of her earlier history. We hear 
of a King named Theseus as having, in the Thirteenth 
Century B. C., united the various townships of Attica into 
one state, making Athens the chief seat of government, 
and establishing, as a religious bond of union, the Pana- 
thensca, or general festival of the great goddess Athena, 
the patron divinity of the land. He is also said to have 


HISTORY OF GREECE 


lOl 


divided the four original tribes of Attica into thirty clans, 
and each clan into thirty houses, an arrangement which 
tended to level distinctions and to increase the power of the 
mass of the people. At first, then, the Athenians were 
under Kings, like the other Hellenes, but about 1050 B. C. 
the title of King seems to have been changed to that of 
Arclion, “ruler,” though the office was still held for life, 
and continued in the same family. The Archon was 
responsible for his acts to a general assembly of the people, 
in which, however, the nobles had the chief influence, and 
down to long after the time of the first Olympiad, Athens 
may be regarded as an oligarchic republic, in which the 
supreme office, the Archonship, was confined to one fam¬ 
ily, and members of the chief court of justice, called Areop¬ 
agus, “hill of Ares,” from the place of its assembly at 
Athens, were elected only from the noble houses. In the 
year B. C. 776 the chronology of Grecian history becomes 
consecutive, and dates are reckoned by Olympiads. These 
were the periods of four years each which elapsed between 
the successive celebrations of the Olympic games in honor 
of the Olympian Zeus, the chief Greek deity, in the plain 
of Olympia in Elis. The First Olympiad began at mid¬ 
summer 776 B. C., the Second Olympiad at midsummer 
772 B. C., and so on—any event being dated by the state¬ 
ment that it occurred in a particular year of a specified 
Olympiad. 

In B. C. 752 the office of Archon became decennial. 
In 714 is was thrown open to the whole body of the nobles 
instead of being confined to the family of the legendary 
King Codrus. In 683 the office became annual, and its 
duties were divided among nine Archons, discharging the 
different functions which had pertained to the King as 
general guardian of the rights of citizens, as high-priest, 
as the general-in-chief, and as judicial interpreter of the 


io2 ANCIENT AND MEDIAEVAL HISTORY 


unwritten traditionary law. The people were still with¬ 
out a substantial share in the government, and popular dis¬ 
content at oligarchical oppression caused a demand for a 
written code of laws. The legislator Draco, one of the 
Archons, enacted laws in B. C. 621, the severity of which 
has become proverbial, and which were intended, by their 
rigor, to check the growth of the democracy that was 
clamoring for a change. The penalty of death assigned 
to all offenses, great and small, would enable the nobles to 
get rid of dangerous leaders of the people, but such a sys¬ 
tem could not, and did not, long continue. Anarchy pre¬ 
vailed in Attica, caused by the various factions of the 
oligarchs, the democrats, and a middle party (the “mod¬ 
erates”), and a wise reformer was greatly needed by the 
distracted community. This reformer was found in Solon, 
who was chosen as an Archon in B. C. 594, and invested by 
his fellow-citizens, for the special purpose of restoring 
tranquillity, with unlimited power to change the constitu¬ 
tion. He was already distinguished as a poet and as a 
general in the war of Athens against her neighbor, 
Megara. He made it his great object to put an end to the 
oppressive and excessive power of the aristocracy without 
introducing anything like pure democracy. A truly con¬ 
servative reformer, he proceeded on the principle that 
political power should reside mainly with those who are 
possessed of means and have something to lose in case of 
violent changes. Draco’s statutes were abolished, except 
that involving the penalty of death for murder, and with 
his celebrated disburdening ordinance for the relief of 
debtors. The precise details of this measure are uncer¬ 
tain ; but Solon appears to have shown great skill in mak¬ 
ing arrangements fair to all parties concerned, and he thus 
won the complete confidence of the people for the funda- 


HISTORY OF GREECE 


103 

mental changes in the constitution of the state which he 
next took in hand. 

Democratic character was given at the outset to the 
constitution of Solon by the division of the people into four 
classes, according to property, which was now substituted 
for birth as a qualification for the higher offices of state. 
The nine Annual Archons were continued; state offices 
could be filled only by citizens of the three higher classes. 
A council of state, or senate, called the Boule, was chosen 
annually by lot, to prepare measures for submission to the 
popular assembly, or Ecclesia, in which the citizens of the 
fourth or lowest class (who could hold no state office) had 
the right of voting. The Ecclesia included all classes of 
the citizens, who there legislated, elected the magistrates, 
decided on peace or war, and dealt with other matters sent 
down to it for discussion and decision by the council of 
state. For the courts of justice below the Areopagus, a 
body of 6,000 jurors, was to be annually selected by lot 
from the popular assembly, and the causes were tried by 
divisions of the whole body. Solon was also the author 
of many laws which regulated private life and private 
• rights, public amusements, slavery, marriage, and other 
matters. He appears then to have left Attica for a pro¬ 
longed period of travel abroad. 

A renewal of faction followed Solon’s departure, and 
the struggle of parties ended in the seizure of power by 
the ‘Tyrant” Pisistratus, in the year 560 B. C. In 
this connection the word “Tyrant” means simply an abso¬ 
lute ruler, in the first instance as an usurper of power, and 
not necessarily a cruel misuser of power, as our use of the 
word implies. The Greek “Tyrants” were aristocratic 
adventurers who took advantage of their position and of 
special circumstances to make themselves masters of the 
government in their respective countries. They are 


IC4 ANCIENT AND MEDIAEVAL HISTORY 

found in power from about 650 to 500 B. C., and their rule 
was in several instances highly beneficial to the states 
which they governed. Being carried into power by the 
confidence of the people over the ruins of a defeated 
aristocracy, they established order for the time, and in 
some cases their dynasties lasted for over a Century. In 
the Peloponnesus a succession of such rulers governed 
with justice and moderation for 100 years at Sicyon. At 
Corinth, Periander, succeeding his father Cypselus, ruled 
for forty years, from B. C. 625 to 585, and under him 
Corinth became the leading commercial state in Greece. 
Polycrates, tyrant of Samos, was the most distinguished 
of all these rulers in the period of transition from oligarchy 
to democracy. He was in power in the latter half of the 
Sixth Century B. C., and under him Samos became a pow¬ 
erful and wealthy commercial state. These despots were 
often patrons of literature and the arts, and the oppression 
which was sometimes exercised was relieved by brilliant 
episodes of prosperity and culture. 

The constitution of Solon had not yet entered into the 
political life of the community and made itself felt as the 
habit of civil existence, when Pisistratus (B. C. 560), in 
the lifetime of the great legislator and against his opposi¬ 
tion, acquired supreme power. The legislation of Solon, 
however, virtually continued in force under the rule of the 
dictator, who, after being twice expelled and twice regain¬ 
ing his position, maintained order and held his power till 
his death in B. C. 527. It is to Pisistratus that the world 
owes the preservation in their present form of the poems 
of Homer, which he caused to be collected and edited in a 
complete written text. He was succeeded, as joint-rulers, 
by his sons Hippias and Hipparchus; but the severity of 
Hippias (after the murder of Hipparchus by the famous 


HISTORY OF GREECE 


105 


Harmodius and Aristogeiton) caused his expulsion by the 
people, and the end of the tyranny at Athens, B. C. 510. 

The government at Athens now (B. C. 507) became a 
pure democracy under the auspices of Cleisthenes, of the 
noble family of the Alcmseonidse. He put himself at 
the head of the popular party and made important changes 
in the constitution. The public offices of power were 
thrown open to all the citizens, the whole people was 
divided into ten tribes or wards, and the senate now con¬ 
sisted of 500 members, fifty from each ward or tribe. 
Cleisthenes also introduced the peculiar institution called 
ostracism (from ostrakon, the voting tablet on which the 
name was written) by which the citizens could banish for 
ten years, by a majority of votes, any citizen whose 
removal from the state might seem desirable. This device 
was intended to secure a fair trial for the new constitu¬ 
tion by checking the power of individuals when they might 
appear dangerous to popular liberties, and by putting a stop 
to quarrels between rival politicians. Athens had at last 
secured a republican government of the thoroughly demo¬ 
cratic type, and from this time she began to assume a new 
and ever-growing importance in Greece, and was soon 
regarded as the chief of the Ionian states. The people, 
through their assembly, the Ecclesia, became thoroughly 
versed in public affairs, and practically, as well as legally, 
supreme in the state. Internal quiet was secured and new 
vigor was seen in the whole administration. 

Under the system established by the legislation of 
Lycurgus, Sparta became a thoroughly military state, and 
in two great wars (743-723 and 685-668 B. C.) she con¬ 
quered her neighbors on the west, the Messenians, reduc¬ 
ing them to the condition of the Helots and taking full* 
possession of their land. By this and by successful war 
against her northern neighbors, the people of Argos, 


jo6 ANCIENT AND MEDIAEVAL HISTORY 


Sparta became the leading Dorian state of Peloponnesus 
and of the Grecian world. 

THE PERSIAN INVASIONS 

The great Persian monarchy, founded by Cyrus and 
extended by Cambyses, was consolidated by Darius I, who 
became King of Persia in B. C. 521. By the conquest of 
Lydia, Persia had become master of the Greek cities on the 
coast of Asia Minor, which Croesus, King of Lydia, had 
subdued. In B. C. 500 a general revolt of the Ionian cities 
took place, and the Athenians sent a force of ships and sol¬ 
diers to help their kinsmen. The united force of Ionians 
and Athenians took and burned Sardis, the capital of 
Lydia, in 499, but, after a six-years’ struggle, the power 
of Darius conquered the whole sea-board of Ionia, and left 
Persia free to punish the audacity of the Athenians in 
interfering between the great Eastern Empire and her 
revolted subjects. The exiled Hippias fanned the flame 
of the anger of Darius, and the wars between Persia and 
Greece began. 

The first Persian expedition under Mardonius, in B. C. 
492, failed, and the grand attempt was made two years 
later, after many of the Greek islands in the yEgean, and 
some of the states on the mainland, had given in their sub¬ 
mission to the envoys of Darius, sent to demand the token 
of “earth and water.” The two great states, Athens and 
Sparta, treated the Persian despot with contemptuous 
defiance. 

A second expedition, commanded by Datis and Arta- 
phernes, in 490 B. C., crossed the yEgean Sea, guided by 
the traitor Hippias. Naxos was sacked and Eretria was 
betrayed. It seemed hardly possible that Athens could 
be saved. The Persians disembarked 100,000 soldiers 


HISTORY OF GREECE 


107 

near Marathon, in Attica, avoiding the dangers of a voy¬ 
age around the rocky coast. An appeal was made to 
Sparta for help, but the Spartans, because of religious 
scruples, would not march before the full moon. So 
9,000 Athenians, with slaves to carry their shields, went 
forth to meet the mighty army of the Persian King. On 
the way they were joined by a thousand Plat^eans—the 
whole force of that city—who came to stand by their old 
protectors. Miltiades, formerly ruler of the Chersonese, 
wa? one of the ten Athenian generals. Five of these voted 
for awaiting Spartan help, while the other live, led by 
Miltiades, were for giving battle at once. Miltiades’ coun¬ 
sel prevailing, under his command the Greeks charged 
down the hillside upon the Persians. The Greek center 
was driven in, but the Greek wings prevailed and then 
closed upon the Persian center. The Persians fled to their 
ships. Six thousand Persians fell, while the Greek loss 
was only 192. By their heroic courage the Athenians 
saved their country, liberty and the civilization of the 
world. Hippias was left on the held of battle and the 
Persian fleet sailed away to Asia in shame. The hero of 
this great victory, Miltiades, undertook to conquer the 
Cyclades, but failing before Paros was accused of treason 
and condemned to a hue which he was unable to pay. He 
died in prison from the effect of wounds received at 
Marathon. 

The victory at Marathon, in which the Spartans had no 
part, in its immediate moral result, encouraged further 
resistance to a power hitherto deemed invincible, and gave 
Athens a position in Greece which she had never yet held. 
She was released from fear of the return of her tyrant 
Hippias, who fell in the battle: her soldiers had caused 
themselves to be regarded as the equals in valor of the 
famous Spartans: she had won a hard-fought day to be 


10S ANCIENT AND MEDIAEVAL HISTORY 


commemorated in painting, and poetry, and oratory as 
long as Athens should endure—a glory to be enshrined 
for evermore in the proud hearts of her free and patriotic 
people. The death of Darius in B. C. 485 prevented him 
from renewing the Persian attack on Greek liberties, and 
the task was bequeathed to his son Xerxes. 

A respite of ten years was granted to Greece before she 
was again called on to meet Asiatic aggression. The lead¬ 
ing men in Athens at this time were Theinistocles and 
Aristides. Aristides, famed for his justice, was a 
man of the purest patriotism, and of conserva¬ 
tive politics, which caused him to oppose the meas¬ 
ures of Themistocles, the champion of the democ¬ 
racy. The sagacious Themistocles foresaw the need 
of a powerful navy to resist the coming onslaught of 
Persian power, and the Athenians, by his advice, used the 
income derived from the silver-mines at Laurium, a moun¬ 
tain in Attica, for the purpose of building and equipping a 
fleet of 200 triremes, war-galleys propelled by three banks 
of oars on each side. While the great preparations of 
Persia went on, Aristides was banished, by the operation 
of ostracism, in B. C. 483, but was recalled when the inva¬ 
sion took place. As the time for the great conflict drew 
near, a general congress of the Greek states was summoned 
by Athens and Sparta and held at the Isthmus of Corinth. 
At this national meeting Spart? ' as placed, by the voice 
of Greece, at the head of the patriotic league against 
Persia. 

Early in the spring of B. C. 480 Xerxes set out from 
Sardis for Greece with a host such as the world has never 
seen gathered before or since. Allowing for exaggera¬ 
tion, it seems probable that it exceeded one million of men, 
including camp-followers, a throng representing more 
than forty different tribes or nations, in all their varieties 


HISTORY OF GREECE 


109 

of complexion, language, dress, and fighting equipment. 
This huge force passed into Europe by a double bridge of 
boats across the Hellespont, and marched through Thrace, 
Macedonia, and Thessaly, with the view of coming down 
from the north upon Attica. The Persian fleet, of 1,200 
triremes and many transports, kept its course along the 
northern shore of the iEgean Sea, and then southward, in 
communication with the land-force. 

The Greeks had resolved to make their stand at the 
Pass of Thermopylae, in Eastern Locris, a narrow way 
between the eastern spur of Mount CEta and the marsh 
on the edge of the Gulf of Malis. It was now midsummer, 
and the Olympic games and a great Dorian festival being 
at hand, the Greeks had decided to solemnize these, in the 
hope that a small force could hold the pass against the 
Persians till the whole Greek army was gathered. The 
Spartan King, Leonidas, with 300 Spartans, and a total 
force of about 7,000 men, was charged with the defence of 
the position. For a whole day’s desperate fighting the 
Greeks held their ground against the Persians, slaughter¬ 
ing them in heaps, and, to the wrath and astonishment of 
Xerxes, who sat on his throne and watched the conflict, 
they even repulsed the Persian guard, the ten thousand 
“Immortals,” as Oriental vanity named them. During 
the second day the Greeks still kept firm, but on the third 
a traitor, named Ephialtes, of accursed memory, showed 
Xerxes a path across the hills by which the Greek position 
could be taken in the rear. Then came the end, of undying 
fame for Greek valor. The main Greek force retreated 
when the position was seen to be turned, but Leonidas and 
the survivors of the three hundred Spartans and seven 
hundred Thespians charged desperately into the thick of 
the Persians on the open ground to the north of the pass, 
and were killed to the last man, after slaying two brothers 


no ANCIENT AND MEDIAEVAL HISTORY 


of Xerxes and many Persian nobles. Thus did the Spar¬ 
tans act up to their country’s laws, bidding them die on the 
ground they occupied rather than yield, and the brave 
Thespians shared their fate. The history of the world 
has nothing finer or more famous than this act of self- 
devotion “for altars and hearths’’ against overwhelming 
force. The Battle of Thermopylae took place in August, 
B. C. 480. 

The naval force of the Greeks was posted to the north 
of the island of Euboea, and fought smartly, though inde¬ 
cisively, against the superior Persian fleet, about the time 
of the fight at Thermopylae. Themistocles was directing 
the operations of the Greeks, and when he learned that the 
pass was carried and the Persians were marching on 
Athens, he withdrew the Greek fleet southward to the Bay 
of Salamis, southwest of Attica. Resistance to the Per¬ 
sian force on land was hopeless, and Themistocles, as the 
enemy approached, put the whole population of Athens on 
shipboard, transported them to Salamis and to the Pelo¬ 
ponnesus, and prepared to encounter the enemy’s fleet 
again. The Persian army occupied and burnt Athens; 
and by this time the Persian fleet, after severe losses by 
storms off the coast of Euboea, was face to face with the 
Greek ships near Salamis. The Greek fleet numbered 
about three hundred and fifty vessels, of which nearly two 
hundred belonged to Athens, to encounter three times the 
number on the Persian side. On the shore of Attica sat 
Xerxes to watch the result. The Persian ships, crowded 
in a narrow sea, could not maneuver, and the skill of the 
Greek sailors in rowing and steering made the victory, won 
by “ramming” the enemy, easy and complete for the infe¬ 
rior force. The Persians were routed with the loss of 
over two hundred ships. The battle of Salamis occurred 
in September, B. C. 480. 


HISTORY OF GREECE 


in 


The Oriental vanity and overweening confidence of 
Xerxes were beaten down by this disaster, and the sea 
being closed to him, he made his way back to Persia by the 
land-route which had brought him to the scene of an 
anticipated triumph over his hereditary foes. He quitted 
Greece in October, leaving his general Mardonius behind 
him, with a force of 300,000 men, to winter in Thessaly, 
and prosecute the war in the spring of the next year. 
Early in B. C. 479 Mardonius marched through Bceotia 
into Attica and retook Athens, again abandoned by its 
inhabitants and again burnt by the Persians. He then 
returned into Bceotia, and in September was fought the 
great, final, and decisive battle of Plataea. There an army 
of 70,000 Greeks thoroughly defeated the Persian host. 
The Athenians and their allies were commanded by 
Aristides; and the Spartans, with their confederates, were 
under the Spartan Prince Pausanias, who also held the 
command-in-chief. The Greeks slaughtered the Per¬ 
sians like sheep, and stormed their camp, in which was 
taken a great and magnificent booty, displaying in a strik¬ 
ing form Oriental wealth and luxury. From part of the 
plunder the Greeks fashioned a golden offering for the 
Delphian Apollo, supported by a three-headed brazen ser¬ 
pent, still to be seen in the Hippodrome at Constantinople. 
The Persian fleet had retreated, after Salamis, to Asia 
Minor, and in the autumn of B. C. 479 a combined naval 
and military force of Spartans, Athenians, and their allies 
encountered them on the coast of Ionia. On the very 
same day at Plataea, in September, the Perisans were 
defeated, both by land and sea, at and off Mt. Mycale oppo¬ 
site the island of Samos. 

Thermopylae, Salamis, Plataea, Mycale—these four 
glorious conflicts had decided, and for ever, the contest 
between Asiatic despotism and Greek freedom, the East 


1 12 ANCIENT AND MEDIAEVAL HISTORY 


and the West, the old civilization and the new; between 
darkness and light, between self-indulgence and self-cul¬ 
ture, between effete Orientalism and the magnificent pos¬ 
sibilities of a future reserved now for Athens, Europe, and 
the world. At Thermopylae the Greeks had shown match¬ 
less, though for the moment ineffective heroism; at 
Salamis they had won the mastery of the sea; at Plataea 
and Mycale they had completed the destruction of the 
forces of the foe that should nevermore attempt to med¬ 
dle, uninvited, with the destinies of Europe. To Athens, 
the chief victor at Salamis—to Athens and to Themis- 
tocles, the great leader who had abandoned a city to save a 
world, the chief thanks were due, and they have been amply 
paid by posterity. The immediate consequences were that 
within two years from Salamis and Plataea the Persians 
were driven from all the points held by them on the north¬ 
ern coast of the yEgean, and many of the maritime states 
of Greece had ranged themselves under the general leader¬ 
ship of Athens. 

The half-century following the battle of Salamis 
(B. C. 480-430) forms the most brilliant period of 
Athenian history, and one of the greatest eras in the his¬ 
tory of the world. About B. C. 470 Pericles, the illustri¬ 
ous man who gives his name to this age, began to be dis j 
tinguished in Athenian politics as leader of the democratic 
party. In the constitution of Athens a wide scope was 
given for the development of great political characters* 
because the system not only allowed the display of a man’s 
powers, but summoned every man to use those powers for 
the general welfare. At the same time, no member of the 
community could obtain influence unless he had the means 
of satisfying the intellect, taste, and judgment, as well as 
the excitable and volatile feelings, of a highly cultivated 
people. Such a man, in an eminent degree, was Pericles. 


HISTORY OF GREECE 


"3 


From the grandeur of his personality he has been called 
“the Zeus of the human Pantheon of Athens.” His stat¬ 
ure was majestic, his aspect stern, his voice sweet, his man¬ 
ners reserved, his courtesy princely, his self-possession 
imperturbable, his oratory studied, measured, overpower¬ 
ing in its awful splendor and effect. For over thirty years 
(B. C. 461-429) Pericles swayed the policy of Athens 
with an influence and authority derived from his personal 
character, and the impression which he produced on the 
minds of his fellow-citizens that he was a thoroughly noble 
man, exclusively intent upon the weal of the state, and 
superior to all around him in native genius and acquired 
knowledge. 

After the fall of the sagacious, subtle, prompt, ener¬ 
getic, and resourceful Themistocles, banished by ostracism 
in B. C. 469 at the instance of the aristocratic party in 
Athens, the wealthy, able, and popular Cimon was at the 
head of affairs. In B. C. 466 he gained a great victory, 
both by land and sea, over the Persians, at the mouth of the 
river Eurymedon, in Pamphylia, on the south coast of Asia 
Minor. A part of the value of the plunder taken was 
devoted to the adornment, with splendid porticoes, groves, 
and gardens, of the city of Athens, which Themistocles had 
rebuilt and fortified. Cimon spent large sums of his own 
<on the city, and under his direction the defences of the 
famous Acropolis (the citadel of Athens) were com¬ 
pleted. He was the son of Miltiades, the victor of Mara- 
'thon. In B. C. 461 the democratic party at Athens ban¬ 
ished Cimon by the ostracism, and Pericles, who had been 
for some years his rival, came to the front. 

To strengthen the power of the democracy Pericles had 
caused his partisan, Ephialtes, to bring forward a measure, 
which was carried, for abridging the power of the aristo¬ 
cratic stronghold, the court of Areopagus, by withdrawing 
Voi,. 1 — 8 


114 ANCIENT AND MEDIEVAL HISTORY 


certain causes from its jurisdiction. This was severely 
felt by the oligarchy, and henceforward, on the fall of 
Cimon, the power of Pericles was paramount at Athens. 
He had already gained popular favor by an enactment 
that the citizens should receive from the public treasury the 
price of admission to theatrical performances, and also 
payment for attendance as jurors in the courts before 
described, and for service as soldiers. Pie gave especial 
attention to the strengthening of the Athenian navy, and 
to him is due, in the largest measure, the adornment of 
Athens with those triumphs of sculpture, those eternal 
monuments of architecture, whose remains astonish pos¬ 
terity, and have made Grecian art famous in all after-ages 
of the world. Pericles was at once a statesman, a general, 
a man of learning, and a patron of the fine arts. He recov¬ 
ered for Athens (B. C. 445) the revolted island of Euboea; 
he was the friend of the great sculptor Phidias, and in his 
age the great dramatic compositions of Sophocles were 
presented on the Athenian stage. 

The development of Athenian intellect at this time is, 
indeed, astonishing, and unequaled in the history of the 
world as the display of a possession belonging, in a meas¬ 
ure, to the whole body of citizens in a state. In the 
Ecclesia, or popular assembly, the men of Athens met to 
deliberate upon matters of the highest importance and of 
the most varied interest. The number of their warships, 
the appointments of a stage-play, the reception of ambas¬ 
sadors, the erection of new temples, all these and many 
other matters—intrusted in modern times to committees 
and to boards composed of men of special knowledge, to 
elected parliaments, to sovereigns and statesmen, to pri¬ 
vate enterprise and professional skill—were discussed and 
decided, in that wonderful democracy of Athens, by those 
who, with us, are privileged only to drop a voting-paper 


HISTORY OF GREECE iis 

into the ballot-box at an election. Thus taking a lively 
and unceasing interest in all that arouses the mind, or ele¬ 
vates the passions, or refines the taste; supreme arbiters 
of the art of the sculptor, as of the science of the lawgiver; 
judges and rewarders of the painter and of the poet, as of 
the successful negotiator or the prosperous soldier; we 
see at once the all-accomplished, all-versatile genius of the 
nation, and we behold in the same glance the effect and 
the cause: everything being referred to the people, the 
people learned to judge of everything. They had no need 
of formal education. Their whole life was one school. 
The very faults of their assembly, in its proneness to be 
seduced by extraordinary eloquence, aroused the emulation 
of the orator, and kept constantly awake the imagination 
of the audience. An Athenian was, by the necessity of 
birth, what Milton dreamt that man could only become by 
the labors of completest education—in peace a legislator, 
in war a soldier—in all times, on all occasions, acute to 
judge and resolute to act. All things that can inspire the 
thoughts or delight the hours of leisure were for the peo¬ 
ple. Theirs were the portico and the school of philosophy 
—theirs the theater, the gardens, and the baths; they were 
not, as in Sparta, the tools of the state—they were the 
state! Lycurgus made machines, and Solon men. 

In Sparta the machine was to be wound up by the 
tyranny of a fixed principle; it could not dine as it pleased 
—it was not permitted to seek its partner save by stealth 
and in the dark; its children were not its own—even itself 
had no property in self. Sparta incorporated under the 
name of freedom the most grievous and the most frivolous 
vexations of slavery. And therefore was it that Lacedae¬ 
mon flourished and decayed, bequeathing to fame men 
only noted for hardy valor, fanatical patriotism, and pro¬ 
found but dishonorable craft—attracting, indeed, the won- 


n6 ANCIENT AND MEDIAEVAL HISTORY 


der of the world, but advancing no claim to its gratitude, 
and contributing no single addition to its intellectual 
stores. But in Athens the true blessing of freedom was 
rightly placed in the opinions and the soul. Thought 
was the common heritage, which every man might culti¬ 
vate at his will. This unshackled liberty had its convul¬ 
sions and its excesses, but, producing, as it did, unceasing 
emulation and unbounded competition—an incentive to 
every effort, a tribunal to every claim—it broke into phi¬ 
losophy with the one, into poetry with the other, into the 
energy and splendor of unexampled intelligence with all. 
More than four-and-twenty centuries after the establish¬ 
ment of the Athenian constitution, we yet behold, in the 
labors of the student, in the dreams of the poet, in the 
aspirations of the artist, and in the philosophy of the legis¬ 
lator, the imperishable blessings which we derive from 
the liberties of Athens and the institutions of Solon. The 
life of Athens became extinct, but her soul transfused 
itself, immortal and immortalizing, through the world. 

Athens had first acquired ascendency by her achieve¬ 
ments as one of the champions of Greece against Persia, 
and her maritime power gave her command of the islands 
of the ^Egean, containing the allies whom she transformed 
by degrees into subjects. In B. C. 461 the treasury of the 
confederacy, to which the allies paid tribute, for the main¬ 
tenance of a naval force against Persia, was transferred 
from Delos to Athens, and she then, with full command 
of the joint purse, pursued her policy of aggrandizement 
in the ^Egean. The jealousy of Sparta was aroused, and 
in B. C. 457 and 456 fighting occurred in Boeotia between 
the forces of Sparta with her Boeotian allies, and the Athen¬ 
ian army. Athens, on the whole, prevailed in this con¬ 
test, and most of the Boeotians and Phocians joined the 
Athenian confederacy. In B. C. 447 the aristocratical 


HISTORY OF GREECE 


117 

party in Bceotia got the upper hand, and the Athenian 
troops, after a defeat, were withdrawn. From time to time 
states subject to Athens revolted and were reduced, as 
Euboea in B. C. 444 and Samos in B. C. 440. All this 
tended to produce the conflict between Athens and Sparta, 
with their respective allies ranged on their sides, known 
as the Peloponnesian War, which had so disastrous an 
effect on the fortunes of Greece. 

DOWNFALL OF ATHENS 

The immediate occasion of the Peloponnesian War 
was a quarrel between Corinth and Corcyra, the large 
island (now Corfu) west of Epirus. The Athenians inter¬ 
fered 011 the side of the Corcyrseans, the Spartans took up 
the cause of Corinth; and in B. C. 431 the long-impending 
struggle came on. The real causes of the war were the 
discontent of the allies of Athens with her arbitrary treat¬ 
ment; the rivalry of the democratic principle in the Ionian 
states, headed by Athens, with the aristocratic spirit in 
the Dorian states, of which Sparta was the champion; and 
the jealousy—deep-seated, long-brooding, at last irrepres¬ 
sible—existing between the two great powers—Athens 
and Sparta—of the Greek world. The strength of the 
Ionians was mainly on the sea, of the Dorian states in their 
land forces. The allies of Athens were: Nearly all the 
islands of the TEgean Sea, with Corcyra and Zacynthus 
to the west; the Greek colonies on the shores of Thrace, 
Macedonia, and Asia Minor, with Plataea and a few other 
cities on the mainland of Greece. With Sparta were: All 
the Peloponnesus, except Achaia and Argos, which held 
aloof, Locris, Phocis, Megara, and Boeotia, the island of 
Leucas and a few cities in northwestern Greece. The con¬ 
test lasted, with a short interval, for twenty-seven years— 


t iS ANCIENT AND MEDIAEVAL HISTORY 


from B. C. 431-404, and ended in a general weakening of 
Greece, and in the absolute loss of the Athenian supremacy. 
The gain to the world was the noble work of the historian 
Thucydides, in which he has described, with masterly 
power and fidelity, the changeful course of the struggle 
which he witnessed. 

During the first period—ten years, from B. C. 431-421 
—success was, on the whole, evenly balanced. The 
Athenians lost their great leader, Pericles, in B. C. 429, 
carried off by the plague which then ravaged Athens. The 
Spartan army, which the Athenians could not cope with 
in the open field, regularly invaded and devastated Attica; 
the Athenian fleet, which the Spartans could not rival, 
regularly made descents on the coast of Peloponnesus, and 
was engaged in the defense of the colonies and allies of 
Athens in the yEgean, and in conveying troops to assail¬ 
able points on the mainland, wherever the cause of Sparta 
was favored. After the death of Pericles, the people of 
Athens gave their confidence to unworthy demagogues, of 
whom the most notorious was Cleon. The chief generals 
on the Athenian side were Demosthenes (to be carefully 
distinguished from the great orator of a later time) and 
Nicias; the chief on the Spartan side was the famous Bras- 
idas, who had much success against the Athenian colonies 
on the coast of Thrace. Before the end of this period 
the brilliant Alcibiades began to display his powers as a 
statesman at Athens. In B. C. 422 a battle near Amphip- 
olis, on the coast of Thrace, ended in the defeat of the 
Athenians, and the deaths of Cleon and of Brasidas, the 
latter an irreparable loss to Sparta. On the death of 
Cleon, the mild and cautious Nicias became one of the lead¬ 
ing statesmen at Athens. Plis efforts for peace resulted in 
the conclusion of a truce between Athens and Sparta in 
B. C. 421, 


HISTORY OF GREECE 


119 

The complaints of bad faith as to keeping the terms of 
truce, and the distrust and jealousy of each other felt by 
Sparta and Athens, soon led to a renewal of hostilities, 
instigated by the chief Athenian statesman, Alcibiades. 
Nothing decisive occurred until the Athenians, turning 
their attention westward, resolved to send an expedition 
against Syracuse, the great Dorian settlement in Sicily, 
with a view to the reduction of that fertile and wealthy 
island, and the acquirement of a great dominion in the 
west. Athens, the great repeller of Eastern invasion, 
appeared now as the assailant of others. She had become 
the mistress of the sea, and was hoping now to gain pos¬ 
session of such sway in the Mediterranean from end to 
end as might enable her, with the resources of Sicily and 
of Magna Grsecia at command, to crush Sparta and become 
the foremost power of the world. 

It was in the year B. C. 415 that Athens entered on this 
bold enterprise for conquest, which was to bring her to 
ruin as a state holding a great place amongst the nations 
of the world. A powerful expedition sailed in the sum¬ 
mer of that year, under the command of Alcibiades and 
Nicias. With suicidal folly, the Athenians recalled, on a 
fanatical and probably false charge of insult to the national 
religion, the one man—Alcibiades—who might have made 
the great effort succeed. He fled to Sparta, and by his 
assistance and advice there given contributed much to the 
downfall of his country. The Spartans, in B. C. 414, sent 
a brave, politic, and skillful man named Gylippus to assume 
the command of the forces at Syracuse; and Nicias, a 
weak, overcautious, and irresolute general, was completely 
overmatched. After Athenian repulses at Syracuse, the 
Athenians made a grand effort, and in B. C. 413 sent out 
a second powerful armament of ships and men, com¬ 
manded by Demosthenes and Eurvmedon. It was the last 


i2o ANCIENT AND MEDIEVAL HISTORY 


throw of Athens for the Empire of the world, and it was 
decisively and irretrievably lost. In a grand land-fight, 
and in a series of sea-encounters, in which the Syracusan 
confederate force of galleys was headed by the Corinthian 
squadron, ably-led, the Athenian military and naval force 
was utterly vanquished; Nicias and Demosthenes were 
taken and killed; the whole expedition, to the last ship and 
man, was annihilated. 

Henceforward Athens could only fight, not for con¬ 
quest, but for her life as a great independent state of 
Greece. In B. C. 412 many of her allies or subject states 
revolted, including the wealthy Miletus, on the coast of 
Asia Minor, and the islands of Chios and Rhodes. Sparta 
now formed an alliance with Persia, and used Eastern gold 
to furnish ships and mercenary soldiers against Athens. 
Alcibiades had quarreled with the Spartans, and, rejoin¬ 
ing his country’s side, conducted the war for Athens, in 
some of its closing years, with brilliant success. In B. C. 
411 a revolution took place at Athens, which really 
amounted to a sweeping away of the old democratic con¬ 
stitution of Solon, and the substitution of an oligarchical 
faction in power. 

The war was chiefly carried on in Asia Minor, where 
Alcibiades and others defeated the Spartans and their 
allies by land and sea; but in B. C. 405 the tide of success 
for Athens turned again, and the Athenian fleet was cap¬ 
tured by the Spartan admiral, Lysander, at the so-called 
battle of ^gospotami in the Hellespont, the Athenian gal¬ 
leys being seized, by surprise, on the beach, where they 
had been carelessly left by the crews with an insufficient 
guard. In B. C. 404 Athens, blockaded by the Spartans 
both by land and sea, surrendered to Lysander after a four 
months’ siege, and the war ended in the downfall of 
Athens, and the formal abolition of the great Athenian 


HISTORY OF GREECE 


I 21 


democracy, seventy-six years after the battle of Salamis, 
which had given to Athens her place of pride and power. 
Henceforward Athens was a subordinate power in Greece; 
Sparta was, for a time, supreme; a Spartan garrison held 
the Acropolis; Alcibiades, who might have restored 
Athens, was assassinated in Persia through the influence 
of Lysander; and though, after a brief period of rule by 
the Thirty Tyrants, set up by Lysander, a counter revolu¬ 
tion restored in part the constitution of Solon, the political 
greatness of Athens had departed, and there remained for 
her only her undying empire in art, philosophy and literal 
ture. 

Sparta, on the decline of Athenian power, became the 
leading state in Greece, and held that position for thirty- 
four years, from the capture of the Athenian fleet at 
^Egospotami (B. C. 405) to the defeat of the Spartan 
army at Leuctra by the Thebans (B. C. 371). This period 
was one of warfare carried on by the Spartans with the 
Persians in Asia Minor (B. C. 399-395); with a confed¬ 
eracy against Sparta, composed of Corinth, Athens, 
Argos, Thebes, and Thessaly (B. C. 394-387); and with 
Thebes, as she rose in strength under Pelopidas and Epam- 
inondas (B. C. 378-362). During this time we find both 
Sparta and Athens intriguing with the old enemy, Persia, 
in order to obtain her aid, for Greeks against Greeks, in 
their international contests—so low had Greece fallen, so 
devoid of national spirit had she become, since the days 
of Salamis and Plataea. The chief incidents of the first 
part of the period are the defeat of the troops of the above- 
named confederacy at Coronea in Bceotia by the Spartan 
King, Agesilaus (B. C. 394) ; the destruction of the Spar¬ 
tan fleet at Cnidus in Asia Minor by a combined Persian 
and Athenian fleet under Conon (B. C. 394); and the 
disgraceful Peace of Antalcidas (the Lacedaemonian gen- 


122 ANCIENT AND MEDIAEVAL HISTORY 


eral who arranged it), concluded in B. C. 387. By this 
treaty of peace, (which Sparta brought about in order to 
break up the alliance between Athens and Persia), the 
Greek cities in Asia Minor, and the island of Cyprus, were 
given up to the Persian King; the Athenians were to keep 
only the islands of Scyros, Imbros, and Lemnos, and all 
the other Greek states were to be independent both of 
Athens and Sparta. Greek disunion had thus brought it 
to pass that the Oriental enemy over whom, a century 
before, Greece had so gloriously triumphed, was dictat¬ 
ing terms of settlement in Greek domestic strife. 

The power that the Spartans had acquired among the 
Greek states was abused by them quite as much as the 
Athenians had ever abused theirs; and thus they had 
quickly aroused the hatred and jealousy of the other states. 
Their interference in the internal affairs of Thebes led to 
a war between the two states, which speedily resulted in 
the defeat of Sparta, and the downfall of her supremacy. 
The war between Thebes and Sparta, in the second part 
of this period, began in B. C. 378. Thebes, long undis¬ 
tinguished (since the death of the great poet Pindar, about 
B. C. 440) in purely intellectual matters, had been giving 
great attention to warlike training, evolutions, and tactics, 
and in her two great statesmen and soldiers, Pelopidas and 
Epaminondas, she had found the men to direct her newly 
acquired powers to successful achievements on the field 
of battle. Epaminondas is one of the greatest characters 
in Grecian history. He made Thebes great, and, with his 
death, Theban greatness died. A most skillful general 
and a good man, he was well supported by his close friend 
Pelopidas, who was in all ways worthy of the association 
of their names in recounting the brief glory of Theban 
history. Athens joined Thebes in the contest, and the 
doings of her fleet revived the memory of her old renown, 


HISTORY OF GREECE 


123 


and gave back to her for a time her supremacy over the 
maritime states of Greece. In B. C. 376 the Athenian 
fleet, under Chabrias, severely defeated the Lacedaemonian 
off Naxos. In B. C. 371 the Spartan army invaded Boeo- 
tia, and was utterly defeated by the Thebans, under 
Epaminondas and Pelopidas, at the great battle of Leuctra. 
The moral influence of this victory was very great; the 
name for invincibility, so long possessed by Sparta, passed 
away from her, and henceforward she held but a secondary 
position amongst the states of Greece. The victorious 
Thebans now invaded Peloponnesus, formed an alliance 
with Argos, Elis, and Arcadia, and warred against Sparta 
with success enough to render Messenia independent in 
B. C. 369, after she had been under Spartan dominion for 
350 years. In B. C. 367 Sparta had some success against 
Argos, Arcadia, and Messenia, and in B. C. 364 the The¬ 
bans lost Pelopidas, killed in action in Thessaly. In B. C. 
362 Epaminondas, with a Theban army, invaded Pelo¬ 
ponnesus, and gained his great victory at Mantinea, in 
Arcadia, over the Spartan army, dying gloriously of a 
wound when the battle was won. In B. C. 361 a general 
peace was made, when Greece was for the time exhausted 
by international fighting; the supremacy of Thebes came 
to an end with the loss of Epaminondas, and as Greece 
proper, politically corrupt and greatly weakened by long 
warfare, declined in moral and military strength, a new 
era began with the accession of Philip II to the throne 
of Macedon in B. C. 359. 

Macedonia, to the north of Thessaly, was not consid¬ 
ered by the Plellenes as a part of Plellas, though some 
connection in point of race undoubtedly existed. The peo¬ 
ple seem to have been composed of Thracians and Illyrians 
with a large mixture of Dorian settlers amongst them. 
The country had no political importance till the time of 


124 ANCIENT AND MEDIAEVAL HISTORY 

Philip. The line of Macedonian Kings claimed to be of 
Hellenic descent, and Greek civilization had been culti¬ 
vated by some of them. 

Philip of Macedon was a prince of great ability, edu¬ 
cated at Thebes during the time of Theban supremacy, and 
trained in war by Epaminondas, on whose tactics he 
founded his famous invention, the “Macedonian phalanx.” 
He was a master of the Greek language, and a diligent and 
acute observer, for future use, of the condition of Greece 
and of the character of the degenerate politicians of 
Athens. His fame has been overshadowed by that of his 
illustrious son, but he made Macedonia the leading power 
in Greece, and gave Alexander the basis for his great 
achievements. He was a man of unscrupulous character, 
determined will, prompt action, and patient purpose; and 
when he became King of Macedon in B. C. 359 he had 
formed the plan of making his country supreme in the 
Hellenic world, as Athens, Sparta, and Thebes had suc¬ 
cessively been. He partly bought and partly fought his 
way to the end he had in view, bribing the Greek politi¬ 
cians to further his designs in their respective cities, and 
wielding the phalanx with irresistible effect, when force, 
instead of fraud, was the weapon to be employed. 

From B. C. 356 to B. C. 346 a war called the Phocian 
or First Sacred War was waged between the Thebans 
and the Phocians, with allies on each side, the origin of the 
war being a dispute about a bit of ground devoted for 
religious reasons to lying perpetually fallow. The end of 
it was that Philip of Macedon was called in to settle mat¬ 
ters, and his ambition had secured a firm foothold in 
Greece. He possessed himself by force of the Athenian 
cities of Amphipolis, Pydna, Potidsea, and Olynthus, being 
vigorously opposed throughout by the great Athenian 
orator and patriot, Demosthenes, who strove to rouse his 


HISTORY OF GREECE 


125 


countrymen against Philip’s dangerous encroachments, in 
the famous speeches known as the Olynthiac and Philippic 
orations. 

The political career of Demosthenes extends from 
about B. C. 355-322, and was marked by patriotic fervor 
and matchless eloquence. In B. C. 338 he brought about 
an alliance between Athens and Thebes, and their armies 
met that of Philip on the fatal field of Chaeronea, in Boeo- 
tia. There Greek independence perished—sapped by 
Greek folly, selfishness and sloth—overthrown by the Mac¬ 
edonian phalanx and Philip’s warlike skill. This 
renowned military formation consisted of men ranged six¬ 
teen deep, armed with a pike extending eighteen feet in 
front of the soldier when it was held ready for action, and 
clad in the usual defensive armor. It thus presented a 
weighty mass, bristling with deadly points, to the on¬ 
slaught of the foe. 

The battle of Chseronea, fought in B. C. 338, closes 
the third period of Greek history. Philip had already 
formed and taken some steps toward carrying out the 
design of subjugating the Persian Empire. This task 
was left for his son, Alexander, to undertake, as Philip 
was killed by an assassin in B. C. 336. At a congress held 
at Corinth, after Chaeronea, Philip had been appointed, 
by the voice of united Greece (save Sparta), commander- 
in-chief of the national confederate forces against Persia, 
and Alexander naturally succeeded to the enterprise on 
becoming monarch of Macedon. 

Alexander's conquests 

Alexander of Macedon was one of the supremely great 
men who have been called “world-historical,” because of 
the great influence which their achievements have exer- 


126 ANCIENT AND MEDIEVAL HISTORY 


cised upon the world as they found it, and have continued 
to exert long after they had passed away. 

Alexander, who was educated by Aristotle, the most 
intellectual man of his time, and one of the most intel¬ 
lectual men of all time, was not only a soldier of consum¬ 
mate ability, but a statesman of large and comprehensive 
ideas, as displayed in his schemes of commerce and of cul¬ 
ture, and of the union of the nations into a great Empire 
conterminous with the known and civilized world. Of 
his military abilities it is enough to say that Napoleon 
selected Alexander as one of the seven greatest generals 
whose noble deeds history has handed down to us, and 
from the study of whose campaigns the principles of war 
are to be learned. He is celebrated in Grecian history as 
being, next to Pericles, the most liberal patron of the arts, 
and, in short, there was no department in which the great¬ 
ness of his character, either in personal achievement or in 
his appreciation of others, was not shown forth for the 
admiration of mankind. 

Alexander’s exploits were all performed in the short 
space of thirteen years, his rule lasting from B. C. 336-323. 
Coming to the throne of Macedon at the age of twenty, 
he had to deal with enemies on every side. After putting- 
down rebellion in his own Kingdom, he marched into 
Greece, overawed Thebes, which had been intriguing 
against him, and in a congress of Greek states at the Isth¬ 
mus of Corinth, he was unanimously appointed the repre¬ 
sentative of Greece in command of the great expedition 
against Persia. In B. C. 335 he made a successful expe¬ 
dition against the barbarians of the North and West, the 
Thracians, Getae, and Illyrians, and on his return found 
Thebes in revolt against him. Pie dealt with the matter 
in a sharp, short, and decisive way. Thebes was taken by 
storm; the inhabitants were all slain or sold as slaves; and 


HISTORY OF GREECE 


127 


all the buildings, except the temples and the house which 
had been that of Pindar, the poet, were razed. The cap¬ 
ital of Boeotia had defied Alexander, and had ceased to 
exist. In B. C. 334 Alexander crossed the Hellespont at 
the head of an army of 30,000 foot-soldiers and 5,000 
cavalry, and first met the foe at the river Granicus, in 
Mysia. The result was a Persian defeat, which cleared 
the way through Asia Minor, and brought the Macedon¬ 
ians to the borders of Syria. The second battle (B. C. 
333), and a great one, was fought at Issus, in the south¬ 
east of Cilicia. There Alexander met the King of Persia 
himself, Darius III, and gained a complete victory over 
a vastly superior force. Darius fled, leaving his wife and 
mother prisoners in the conqueror’s hands. They were 
treated by him with courtesy and kindness. 

The Persian resistance disposed of for a time, Alex¬ 
ander turned southward, in order to do his work thor¬ 
oughly as he proceeded, and leave behind him nothing 
unsubdued before his advance into the interior of Asia. 
He made an easy conquest of the cities of Phoenicia, except 
Tyre, which resisted obstinately for seven months, and 
was taken in the summer of B. C. 332. After taking Gaza, 
Alexander marched into Egypt, which received him 
gladly, from hatred of her Persian rulers. Early in B. C. 
331 the Macedonian King handed down his name to future 
ages by founding, at the mouth of the western branch of 
the Nile, the city of Alexandria, which was destined to 
become so famous for commerce, wealth, literature, and 
learning. 

In the spring of B. C. 331 Alexander set out again for 
Persia, where Darius had been gathering an immense 
force with which to make a last struggle for the Empire 
of the world. After traversing Phoenicia and Northern 
Syria, Alexander crossed the Euphrates and Tigris, and 


128 ANCIENT AND MEDIAEVAL HISTORY 


came out on the plain near the little village of Gaugamela, 
to the southwest of the ruins of Nineveh. The great and 
decisive battle that ensued with the Persians was fought 
in October, B. C. 331, and has been called the battle of 
Arbela, from a place many miles to the east, across the 
river Zabatus, where Alexander had his headquarters on 
the day after the battle. 

The battle of Arbela was a miracle of heroism and gen¬ 
eralship on the part of the victor. With a force of less 
than 50,000 men, Alexander met at least six times the 
number of warlike, well-trained troops, on ground admira¬ 
bly suited for the action of their formidable cavalry, almost 
equaling in numbers the whole Greek army. Taking his 
• life in his hand, and risking all to win all; trusting to his 
own skill and to the courage and devotion of his troops; 
calculating on the moral effect to be produced by a sue 
cessful assault on that part of the Persian host where 
Darius himself was posted; confident in the power of the 
phalanx, and yet taking every precaution that skill and 
foresight could suggest—Alexander gained for himself, 
by his dispositions and conduct on this great day, a place 
among the foremost tacticians and heroes in the history 
of the world. The phalanx forced its irresistible way 
through the Persian center, moved nearer and nearer to 
Darius, shook his strong nerves at last, and sent him flee¬ 
ing, fast as horse could bear him, from the field of, net 
merely a lost battle, but a ruined Empire. A few days 
afterward Alexander entered Babylon, far to the south, 
as virtual master of the Eastern world, at the age of 
twenty-five. In the following year (B. C. 330) Darius 
was murdered by his satrap Bessus, governor of Bactria. 

After receiving the surrender of the other two capitals, 
Susa and Persepolis, Alexander spent the year B. C. 330 
in conquering the northern provinces of the Persian 


HISTORY OF GREECE 


129 


Empire, between the Caspian Sea and the Indus. In B. C. 
329 he marched into Bactria, over the mountains now 
called the Hindoo Koosh, caught and slew the traitor Bes- 
sus, and advanced even beyond the river Jaxartes (the Sir 
or Sihon). In B. C. 328 he was engaged in the conquest 
of Sogdiana, between the Oxus and Jaxartes, the country 
of which the capital was Maracanda, the modern Samar- 
cand. In the spring, B. C. 327, Alexander marched 
through what is now Afghanistan, crossed the Indus, and 
defeated an Indian King, Porus, on the banks of the 
Hydaspes. He was thus the first European sovereign to 
conquer the Punjaub, which he restored, in honor of a 
gallant resistance, to his prisoner Porus. Beyond the 
Hyphasis the now war-worn Macedonian soldiers declined 
to march, and Alexander determined to go back, by a new 
route, to Persia. On his way to the Indus he stormed the 
capital of an Indian tribe, now Mooltan, and was himself 
severely wounded in the assault. In B. C. 326 he sailed 
in a fleet, built on the spot, down the Indus, into the ocean; 
despatched a part of the army on board the ships, under 
his admiral Nearchus, by sea coastwise into the Persian 
Gulf, and marched himself with the rest through Gedrosia 
(now Beloochistan), reaching Susa early in B. C. 325. 

During the rest which the troops took here, Alexander, 
many of his generals, and many thousands of his soldiers, 
married Asiatic women, and, with the same view of bring¬ 
ing Europe and Asia into one form of civilization, great' 
numbers of Asiatics were enrolled in the victorious army, 
and trained in the European fashion. For the improve¬ 
ment of commerce, the Tigris and Euphrates were cleared 
of obstructions. From Susa, in the autumn of B. C. 325, 
Alexander visited Ecbatana, in Media, and thence pro¬ 
ceeded to Babylon, which he entered again in the spring 

of B. C. 324. He received on the way ambassadors from 
Voi,. 1 — 9 


130 ANCIENT AND MEDIAEVAL HISTORY 

almost every part of the world which he had awed and 
astonished by his exploits. In the tenth year after he had 
crossed the Hellespont, Alexander, having won his vast 
dominion, entered Babylon; and, resting from his career, 
steadily surveyed the mass of various nations which owned 
his sovereignty, and revolved in his mind the great work 
of breathing into this huge but inert body the living spirit 
of Greek civilization. In the bloom of youthful manhood, 
at the age of thirty-two, he paused from the fiery speed 
of his earlier course, and for the first time gave the nations 
an opportunity of offering their homage before his throne. 
They came from all the extremities of the earth to pro¬ 
pitiate his anger, to celebrate his greatness, or to solicit 
his protection. 

It was the intention of Alexander to make Babylon 
the capital of the Empire, as being the best means of com¬ 
munication between East and West; and among the great 
schemes which he meditated are said to have been the con¬ 
quests of Arabia, of Carthage, of Italy, and of Western 
Europe. For commercial and agricultural purposes he 
intended to explore the Caspian Sea, and to improve the 
irrigation of the Babylonian plain. All his plans were 
made vain by his sudden death of a fever at Babylon in 
the summer of B. C. 323, after a career of which the bare 
recital is, perhaps, the best eulogium. His wisdom as a 
statesman, concerned in retaining what he had subjugated 
as a general, was strikingly shown in the policy which he 
pursued toward the conquered. With enlightened and 
prudent toleration, he protected them from oppression; 
he respected their religion, and left the civil administration 
to their native rulers; his great principle being to alter 
as little as possible the internal organization of the coun¬ 
tries subdued by his arms. In the plans of Alexander, the 
union of the East and the West was to be brought about 


HISTORY OF GREECE 


131 

in the amalgamation of the dominant races by intermar¬ 
riage, by education, and, more than all, by the ties of com¬ 
merce. In nothing, probably, is the superiority of his 
genius more brilliantly displayed than in his exemption 
from all national prejudice. 

Alexander the Great left no heir to his immense 
Empire; but the Greek Kingdoms which arose after him 
in Asia and in Africa are the dynasty which he founded. 
The territory which he had subdued was divided amongst 
many successors, but the Greek culture which his arms con¬ 
veyed with them endured for many generations. In Bac- 
tria (the modern Bokhara), Asia Minor, Armenia, Syria, 
Babylonia and above all in Egypt, Greek Kingdoms were 
established as centers of science, art, and learning, from 
which Greek light radiated into the world around them. 
In Europe, besides that of Macedon, a Kingdom in Thrace, 
stretching beyond the Danube, another in Illyria, and 
another in Epirus, were under the rule of Greek princes. 
The general knowledge of mankind was greatly increased 
by Alexander’s conquests, which opened up the Eastern 
world fully to Europeans, and penetrated into countries, 
such as Bactria and Sogdiana, which were previously 
almost unknown to them. The sciences of geography and 
natural history thus received great additions, and so Asia 
made some return for the boon which she was receiving 
from Europe. To Alexander the world owed, amongst 
other great cities built by him or his successors, Alexandria 
in Egypt, and Antioch in Syria. 

The Greek language became the tongue of all govern¬ 
ment and literature throughout many countries where the 
people were not Greek by birth. It was thus at the very 
moment that Greece began to lose her political freedom 
that she made, as it were, an intellectual conquest of a large 
oart of the world. In the cities and lands which in this 

1. 


13-5 ANCIENT AND MEDIAEVAL HISTORY 

way became partially Hellenized, that is, imbued with 
Greek ideas and civilization, learning and science flour¬ 
ished as they had never flourished before. The Greek 
tongue became the common speech of the civilized world. 
Throughout Asia Minor, Syria, and Egypt, the Hellenic 
character that was thus imparted remained in full vigor 
down to the time of the Mahometan conquests. . . The 

early growth and progress of Christianity were aided by 
that diffusion of the Greek language and civilization. 

On the death of Alexander in B. C. 323 a struggle of 
more than twenty years’ duration ensued among his prin¬ 
cipal generals and their heirs—Perdiccas, Ptolemy, Antig- 
onus, his son Demetrius Poliorcetes, Cassander, Seleucus, 
and others. At last, in B. C. 301, a great and decisive 
battle was fought at Ipsus, in Phrygia, between Antigonus 
(with his son Demetrius) and a confederacy of his rivals. 
The result was to distribute the provinces of Alexander’s 
Empire in the following way: Lysimachus got nearly the 
whole of Asia Minor; Cassander was left in possession 
of Greece and Macedon; Seleucus took Syria and the East; 
Ptolemy had Egypt and Palestine. Of all these we can 
here notice only the two most important Kingdoms— 
that of the Ptolemies in Egypt and that of the Seleucidae 
in the East. 

Ptolemy I, surnamed Soter, the Preserver, who had 
really become King of Egypt on Alexander’s death, was 
the founder of a line of monarchs who governed for 300 
years, until the conquest of Egypt by Rome. His admin¬ 
istration of the country was successful and enlightened, 
and he raised Alexandria to the highest place amongst 
commercial cities. It was he who founded there the colony 
of Jews, to whom the subsequent fame of Alexandria in 
philosophy and literature, as well as in politics, was largely 
due. He was a great patron of science, art and literature, 


HISTORY OF GREECE 


r 33 


and founded the museum and library of Alexandria. The 
great mathematician, Euclid, flourished in his reign. He 
was succeeded in B. C. 285 by his son Ptolemy II, sur- 
named Philadelphus, brotherly. This King is renowned 
as a munificent patron of science and literature, and raised 
to the greatest splendor the institutions founded by his 
father. The library of Alexandria was enriched with the 
treasures of ancient literary art. Pie was the builder of 
the famous lighthouse on the island of Pharos at Alexan¬ 
dria, which was one of the “seven wonders of the world,” 
and he greatly promoted commerce in the Red Sea, and 
the caravan trade with Arabia and India. Ptolemy Phil¬ 
adelphus died in B. C. 247. He was succeeded by his 
son, Ptolemy III, surnamed Euergetes, or “benefactor,” 
by his Egyptian subjects, because he brought back, on his 
return from an Eastern expedition, the statues of their 
gods carried off by Cambyses, and restored them to their 
temples in Egypt. Under the Ptolemies generally, the 
Egyptians were treated with mildness; the civil admin¬ 
istration was much left to native rulers, and the ancient 
religion was respected; all this was in accordance with 
the principles of the great Alexander. The patronage of 
literature was continued, and the court of Ptolemy Euer¬ 
getes was the resort of the most distinguished men of the 
day, including the celebrated grammarian and poet, Cal¬ 
limachus, w T ho was chief librarian of the famous Alexan¬ 
drian institution, and the founder of a great school of 
grammarians. Ptolemy III died in B. C. 222, leaving 
the Graeco-Egyptian Kingdom in the highest prosperity 
at home, and with the widest dominion abroad, which it 
ever attained. Under his vicious son, Ptolemy IV, sur¬ 
named Philopator (filial), who reigned till B. C. 205, the 
Kingdom declined in political power; but even this 
Ptolemy was the supporter of literature, and dedicated a 


134 ANCIENT AND MEDIAEVAL HISTORY 


temple to Homer as a divinity. Under Ptolemy V, sur- 
named Epiphanes (illustrious),who reigned B. C. 205-181, 
nearly all the foreign possessions of Egypt were perma¬ 
nently lost to Antiochus of Syria and others, and Roman 
influence in Egypt began in the form of an alliance for her 
protection. Under the successors of this monarch the 
Egyptian Kingdom gradually declined, and Roman influ¬ 
ence increased, until, with the death of the famous Cleopa¬ 
tra, in B. C. 30, Egypt became a Roman province. 

While the Ptolemies held sway, the city of Alexandria 
was not only the chief center of the commerce of the world, 
but the point of union for Eastern manners and tradition 
with Western civilization. Like Alexander the Great, the 
best of the Ptolemies, amidst all military enterprises, and 
in all civil administration, paid great regard to the spread 
of civilization by the furtherance of commercial inter¬ 
course and of literary and scientific research. The pecu¬ 
liarity of the culture which prevailed during this period 
at the literary capital of the world, Alexandria, was the 
contact and mutual reaction of the ideas of the Jew, the 
Egyptian, and the Greek. The intellectual friction caused 
hereby resulted in great mental activity, especially in math¬ 
ematical science, cultivated with distinguished success by 
Euclid the geometrician, founder of the Alexandrian 
mathematical school; Apollonius, the inventor of conic 
sections; Hipparchus, the father of astronomy and of sci¬ 
entific geography; and Eratosthenes, the learned astron¬ 
omer, geometrician, geographer, and grammarian. What 
the Pharos of Alexandria was to the ships that used her 
harbor, that was Alexandria herself, with her schools of 
learning, to a great part of the civilized world—a light 
shining, not into utter darkness, but so as to guide men 
past the shoals of error into the haven of the truth as then 
known and understood. The Hebrew Scriptures were 


HISTORY OF GREECE 


*35 


translated into Greek (the Septuagint version, or version 
of “the seventy”) by learned Jews; the great Homeric 
poems, the “Iliad” and the “Odyssey,” were revised and 
critically edited by the celebrated grammarians Zenodotus, 
his pupil Aristophanes, and the greatest critic on 
antiquity, Aristarchus, whose edition of Homer has been 
the basis of the text to the present day. 

The Syrian monarchy of the Seleucidae began in B. C, 
312, with Seleucus I, surnamed Nicator, one of Alexan¬ 
der’s generals, and under him was extended over much of 
Asia Minor, including also the whole of Syria from the 
Mediterranean to the Euphrates, and the territory east¬ 
ward from the Euphrates to the banks of the Oxus and the 
Indus. Seleucus I was an able and energetic monarch, and 
sedulously carried out the plans of Alexander the Great 
for the spreading of Greek civilization, establishing in 
nearly every province of his great Empire Greek colonies 
for that purpose. He died in B. C. 280, having founded 
the city of Antioch in Syria as the capital of his Kingdom. 
His successors, the dynasty known as the Seleucidae, or 
“descendants of Seleucus,” ruled for about two centuries. 
The most notable of these monarchs were named Anti- 
ochus. The third of the name, Antiochus the Great, 
reigned from B. C. 223 to 187, and was the monarch at 
whose court Hannibal, the great Carthaginian, took 
refuge. Antiochus invaded Greece in B. C. 192, and there 
came into collision with the Romans, who defeated him 
both by land and sea, and compelled him to yield a large 
part of his dominions in Asia Minor. Much of the east¬ 
ern territory had been lost before this time, as well as 
Phoenicia, Palestine, and Western Syria, conquered by 
Ptolemy Philopator, King of Egypt. Antiochus Epiph- 
anes (reigned B. C. 175-164) was the King who oppressed 
the Jews, and tried to introduce the worship of the Greek 


136 ANCIENT AND MEDIAEVAL HISTORY 

divinities; it was against him that the brave Maccabees 
rose in rebellion. The Syrian Kingdom came to an end 
in B. C. 65, conquered by the Romans under Pompey. 

THE PERIOD OF DECLINE 

The last period in the history of Greece presents a 
spectacle dreary and degraded, affecting and instructive. 
Long wars were carried on, amongst different successors 
of Alexander, in contention for the sovereignty of the 
Greek states. Factions and intrigues were rife in and 
between the different communities. From time to time 
great and patriotic men arise, making a struggle glorious 
for themselves, vain in its issue, for the restoration of 
political freedom and of the spirit of the olden time that 
could return no more. “Leagues” and confederations 
were formed in order to resist, if possible, by combination, 
and by the resources of diplomacy, the coming doom of 
political extinction. Greece was, last of all, brought into 
contact with the guile and power of Rome, her great suc¬ 
cessor in the world’s history, and absorbed into her grow¬ 
ing Empire. 

An effort to free Greece from the Macedonian suprem¬ 
acy was headed by Athens in B. C. 323. The renowned 
Athenian orators, Demosthenes and Hyperides, were the 
political heroes of the occasion, opposed by Phocion, a man 
of pure character, but one who despaired of a successful 
rising against Antipater, ruler of Macedonia before and 
after Alexander the Great’s death. Athens was joined by 
most of the states in Central and Northern Greece, and the 
war derives its name from the town of Lamia in Thessaly, 
where Antipater, after being defeated by the confederates, 
was besieged for some months. The war ended in B. C. 
322, by Antipater’s complete victory at the battle of Cran- 










• '» 



1 








1 



PINDAR AT THE OLYMPIAN GAMES 
Painting- by G. Sciutti 

















HISTORY OF GREECE 


*37 

non, in Thessaly. Demosthenes ended his life by poison 
in the same year; Hyperides was killed by Antipater’s 
orders; Phocion died by the hemlock at Athens in B. C. 
317, on a charge of treason. 

A distinguished character of this period of Greek 
decline was Demetrius Poliorcetes (“besieger of cities”), 
King of Macedonia B. C. 294-287. Elis life was passed in 
fighting with varied success, and he was driven from the 
throne of Macedon at last by a combination of enemies, 
including the famous Pyrrhus, King of Epirus. Deme¬ 
trius was a man of wonderful energy, promptitude, daring, 
and fertility of resource, deriving his surname from the 
enormous machines which he caused to be constructed for 
the siege of Rhodes, one of his warlike enterprises. He 
was of service to Athens, and freed her for a time from 
Macedonian domination before he became himself ruler of 
Macedon. 

Epirus, in the northwest of Greece, was inhabited 

by descendants of the old Pelasgians and Illyrians. 
The first King was Alexander, the brother of Olympias, 

mother of Alexander the Great. He ruled from B. C. 
336 to B. C. 326. Pyrrhus became King in B. C. 295, 
and reigned till B. C. 272, and is renowned in history 
as the greatest warrior of his age. His career resembles 
that of Charles XII of Sweden in its warlike activity and 
adventurous character, and in its failure to leave any 
enduring result of ambitious enterprise and brilliant 
achievement. Pyrrhus seems, says Mommsen, to have 
“aimed at doing in the Western world what Alexander 
the Great did in the East; but while Alexander’s work out¬ 
lived him, Pyrrhus witnessed with his own eyes the wreck 
of all his plans.” According to the great historian of 
Rome, Dr. Arnold, Pyrrhus aimed at foreign conquest as 
a means of establishing his supremacy over Greece itself. 


*38 ANCIENT AND MEDIAEVAL HISTORY 

He hoped that after being victorious over the Romans 
he should then, passing over into Sicily, assail thence 
effectually the dominion of the Carthaginians in Africa, 
and return home to Epirus with an irresistible force of 
subject-allies, to expel Antigonus from Thessaly and 
Bceotia, and, making himself master of Macedonia, to 
reign over Greece and the world, as became the kinsman 
of Alexander and the descendant (as he claimed to be) of 
Achilles. 

This affable, generous, daring, and popular prince 
fought with great bravery at the decisive battle of Ipsus 
in B. C. 301. He had been driven by his subjects from 
Epirus; but, assisted with a fleet and army by Ptolemy I 
of Egypt, returned thither and began his actual reign in 
B. C. 295. His first efforts were turned against Mace¬ 
donia; but, after much fighting, he lost his hold there in 
B. C. 286. It was in B. C. 280 that he began his great 
enterprise by crossing over into Italy, to aid the Tarentines 
against the Romans. In his first campaign he defeated the 
Romans in the battle of Pleraclea in Lucania. The skill 
of Pyrrhus was aided by a force of armored elephants and 
by the Macedonian formation of the phalanx, both novel¬ 
ties in war to the Romans. 

In the second campaign (B. C. 279) Pyrrhus gained 
a second dearly-bought victory over the Romans at Ascu- 
lum in Apulia, but there was no decisive result, and in 

B. C. 278 he crossed over into Sicily, to help the Greeks 
there against the Carthaginians. At first he was success¬ 
ful, and defeated the Carthaginians, taking the town of 
Eryx; but he failed in other operations, and returned to 
Italy in B. C. 276, again to assist the Tarentines against, 
the Romans. In B. C. 275 his career in Italy was closed! 
by a great defeat inflicted by the Romans at the battle of 
Beneventum in Samnium, and Pyrrhus returned to Epirus 


HISTORY OF GREECE 


*39 

with the remnant of his army. In B. C. 273 he invaded 
Macedonia with such success as to become King, and his 
restless spirit then drove him to war in Peloponnesus. He 
was repulsed in an attack on Sparta, and, after entering 
the city of Argos to assist one of its factions, was knocked 
from his horse, stunned by a heavy tile hurled from a 
house-top by a woman’s hand, and killed by the soldiers 
of the other party. Thus died Pyrrhus, in the forty-sixth 
year of his age and the twenty-third of his reign, a man 
coming nearer than any other in the olden time to the 
character of one of the chivalrous fighters of the Middle 
Ages—a Coeur de Lion, and something more—a man of 
the highest military skill, capable of conceiving great 
enterprises, but without the steady resolution and the prac¬ 
tical wisdom to bring them to a successful issue. 

An interesting occurrence of the time was an invasion 
of Greece by the Gauls, in B. C. 280. After penetrating 
through Macedonia and Thessaly, they were defeated un¬ 
der their leader Brennus (to be carefully distinguished 
from the captor of Rome a century earlier), near Delphi, 
in Phocis. Some of the Gauls in this irruption made their 
way into Asia Minor, and ultimately gave their name to 
the province called Galatia, adopting the Greek customs 
and religion, but keeping their own language. 

In B. C. 284 iEtolia, a large territory in the west of 
Central Greece—many of the tribes of which were bar¬ 
barians (i.e. did not speak Greek) at the time of the 
Peloponnesian war—formed against the Macedonian 
monarchy a powerful league, which included Acarnania, 
Locris, and part of Thessaly, and had many allies in 
Peloponnesus. This and other such federal unions of dif¬ 
ferent states had for their object the restoration and main¬ 
tenance of Greek independence, the control of questions of 
peace and war being left to certain high officials and a com- 


140 ANCIENT AND MEDIAEVAL HISTORY 

mittee appointed by the different states. They were serv¬ 
iceable for a time against Macedonia, but all succumbed at 
last to the power of Rome. Most of Greece was included 
in one or other of these confederacies, while Macedonia 
in the North was ever striving to recover and to maintain 
her influence, and Sparta in the South kept her usual posi¬ 
tion of sullen isolation. 

The Achaean League was founded, in its new form, 
in B. C. 280, consisting of the towns in Achsea, and after¬ 
ward including Sicyon, Corinth, Athens, and many other 
Greek cities, so that it became the chief political power in 
Greece. In B. C. 245 the able and patriotic Aratus (some¬ 
times called the “last of the Greeks”), became general or 
head of the league, and much extended its influence, being 
especially skillful in diplomacy. Philopoemen, an Arca¬ 
dian, was another distinguished man of this period, and 
became general of the league in B. C. 208, and again in 

B. C. 201 and B. C. 192. He was successful in battle 
against the Spartans when they made war on the League, 
and in B. C. 188 took Sparta, leveled the fortifications, 
and abolished the institutions of Lycurgus, introducing in 
their stead the Achaean laws. He died in B. C. 182, a great 
man, worthy of a better age and of a better fate, having 
been taken in battle by the revolted Messenians, and poi¬ 
soned in prison. 

In B. C. 244 Agis IV, one of the associate Kings of 
Sparta, tried to reform the state by a revival of the decayed 
institutions of Lycurgus, Sparta having fallen away into 
luxury and vice, which had sapped national and social 
strength. His colleague, Leonidas II, assassinated him by 
command of the Ephors, to please the corrupt Spartan 
aristocracy. Cleomenes III was King of Sparta from B. 

C. 236-222, and his period of rule throws a last gleam of 
olden glory over the gloom of his country’s inevitable 


HISTORY OF GREECE 


*4 X 

decay. He was a Spartan of the olden type, modified by 
the age in which he lived, and strove with great energy 
and temporary success to regenerate his country. He was 
successful in war against the Achaean League, and in B. C. 
226 effected a revolution at home. He overthrew the 
Ephors, and restored the ancient constitution on a new and 
wider basis by admitting to Spartan citizenship many of 
the Perioeci, while he enforced the regulations of Lycur- 
gus bearing on simplicity of life and manners. His power 
was ended by an alliance between his old enemy, the 
Achaean League, and the Macedonians, whose united 
forces completely defeated him at the battle of Sellasia, 
in Laconia, B. C. 222. He fled to Egypt, and died there 
by his own hand in B. C. 220. With him the day of Sparta 
was done as a free state, and she sank into insignificance, 
forced at last to join the Achaean League in B. C. 188, by 
Philopcemen. 

Macedon was brought into collision with the growing 
power of republican Rome during the reign of King Philip 
V, B. C. 220-178. He was an able monarch, skilled in 
war, but was totally defeated by the Roman general Fla- 
mininus,at the battle of Cynoscephalae, in Thessaly, in B.C. 
197. In the following year, by authority of Rome, Greece 
was declared free and independent by a herald at the Isth¬ 
mian Games, which were celebrated at Corinth. The 
power of Macedon thus virtually came to an end, but, as 
regarded the Greeks, this proclamation was really a trans¬ 
fer of supremacy from Macedon to Rome, and hencefor¬ 
ward Rome constantly interfered in Greek affairs. Domes¬ 
tic faction helped Roman intrigues, ambition and arms, 
and the battle of Pydna, in Macedonia, gained by the 
Romans 5 n B. C. 168 over Perseus, the last King of Mace¬ 
don, formally ended the dominion established by Philip 


142 ANCIENT AND MEDIAEVAL HISTORY 

II nearly two centuries before. Macedonia was made a 
Roman province in B. C. 147. 

The Achaean League had gradually declined in power, 
and in B. C. 150 war with Rome began, as a last effort 
on behalf of Greece. It ended in the defeat of the forces 
of the League by the Roman general Mummius, under the 
walls of Corinth, B. C. 146. The city was taken, plun¬ 
dered, and burned to the ground; the Achaean League was 
formally dissolved, and Greece was made into a Roman 
province under the name of Achaia in B. C. 146. Amongst 
others, the city of Athens was allowed to retain a kind of 
freedom, and she became, along with Alexandria, a uni¬ 
versity town of the civilized world, in which students of 
art, philosophy, and literature found the best models and 
the best instruction, and were inspired by memorials of 
the past in a land that was politically dead, but was living 
with an imperishable life in all that pertains to the highest 
forms of intellectual culture. 

GREEK COLONIES 

By the peace of Antalcidas, concluded in B. C. 387, 
the Greek cities in Asia Minor were ceded to Persia, and on 
the fall of the Persian Empire they were incorporated with 
Alexander’s, and followed the fortunes of some of the 
Kingdoms formed out of the fragments of his vast domin¬ 
ion. Cyprus and much of the south coast of Asia Minor 
came under the Ptolemies of Egypt; nearly all the west 
coast was governed by the Seleucidae of the Syrian King¬ 
dom; the coast opposite to Lesbos became in B. C. 280 
the independent Kingdom of Pergamus, lasting till B. C. 
133, when its King, Attalus III, bequeathed his territory 
to the Romans. Pergamus was a splendid city, with a 
library and school of literature rivaling those of Alexan- 


HISTORY OF GREECE 


J 4 3 


dria, and interesting in the history of books for the inven¬ 
tion of parchment as a writing material, the prepared skin 
of sheep and goats there introduced being called by the 
Romans Charta Pergamena, or paper of Pergamus, 
whence (through the French parchemin) our word is de¬ 
rived. Smyrna is remarkable as the only great city on the 
west coast of Asia Minor which has survived to the present 
day, where it remains the greatest commercial town 
of that quarter of the Mediterranean. The ancient city 
was abandoned and a new one founded near it on the pres¬ 
ent site by Antigonus, one of Alexander’s generals. It lias 
a splendid harbor, and soon attained great prosperity, 
which it kept through the Roman times, being famous also 
as one of the “seven churches of Asia,” addressed by St. 
John in the Apocalypse, and as the scene of the martyrdom 
of Polycarp, its bishop. Ephesus, chief of the Ionian 
cities, was celebrated for its temple of Artemis (Diana), 
built in the Sixth Century B. C., and burnt down by the 
incendiary Herostratus on the night on which Alexander 
the Great was born, B. C. 356 . It was splendidly rebuilt, 
and was the chief ornament of the magnificent city, of 
which many ruins are still visible. Ephesus flourished 
through the time of Alexander’s successors, and became 
under the Romans the capital of the province of Asia, and 
the greatest city of Asia Minor, being well known also in 
connection with early Christianity and St. Paul. Halicar¬ 
nassus, the Dorian city in Caria, was taken by Alexander 
the Great and destroyed, in B. C. 334 . It had a world¬ 
wide reputation through its Mausoleum (the origin of the 
name of all such splendid tombs), the edifice erected by 
Queen Artemisia II (who reigned B. C. 35 2 *35°)» 
honor of her husband, Mausolus. The greatest Greek 
sculptors of the age adorned this building by their art, and 
some splendid relics of it are in the British Museum. 


144 ANCIENT AND MEDIEVAL HISTORY 


The island of Rhodes early became a great maritime 
state, and founded many important colonies in Sicily, 
Southern Italy, and elsewhere. The city of Rhodus 
(Rhodes) was built in B. C. 408, and the island, after sub¬ 
jection both to Sparta and to Athens, became an independ¬ 
ent republic in B. C. 355. After Alexander the Great’s 
death, Rhodes was in alliance with the Greek Kingdom in 
Egypt (the Ptolemies), the city acquiring great fame by 
its successful resistance in B. C. 305 to the efforts of 
Demetrius Poliorcetes. After this even the famous Colos¬ 
sus (one of the “seven wonders”) was erected at the mouth 
of the harbor, but not with its legs extended across, as 
commonly supposed. Greek taste would be a guarantee 
against an attitude so absurd and inelegant, and there is 
no authority for the statement. It was a huge bronze 
statue of the Sun-god, 105 feet in height, and remained 
there for 56 years, being overthrown and shattered by an 
earthquake in B. C. 224. Rhodes remained a great com¬ 
mercial state and maritime power till the time of the 
Roman emperors, but the city was completely ruined by 
an earthquake in A. D. 155. 

In Italy Tarentum, founded in B. C. 708 by Lacedae¬ 
monian settlers, became the greatest city of Magna Graecia, 
and had a large commerce, war-fleet and army. The cit¬ 
izens were wealthy and luxurious, and at last sought aid 
from Greece against Italian foes. They were helped for 
a time by Pyrrhus against the Romans, but after his defeat 
the city of Tarentum was taken by the latter in B. C. 272, 
and its prosperity departed after the second Punic war, 
in which it revolted to Hannibal, being retaken by Rome 
in B. C. 207. Croton or Crotona was a powerful com¬ 
mercial city, famous for the school of the philosopher 
Pythagoras, and, in a different way, for the possession of 
the greatest athlete of all Grecian history, Milo, a man 


HISTORY OF GREECE 


*45 


of prodigious strength and activity, six times victorious in 
wrestling at the Olympian and as many times at the 
Pythian games. It destroyed the wealthy and luxurious 
city of Sybaris in B. C. 510, and sank itself to decay in 
its wars with Syracuse and with Pyrrhus. Thurii was a 
powerful Greek city in the same quarter, near to Sybaris, 
and was founded in B. C. 443 by the remains of the Syb¬ 
arites and by colonists from all parts of Greece, including 
many from Athens, and the historian Herodotus. In the 
Third Century B. C. it fell under the power of Rome. 

In Sicily, the Doric city of Agrigentum was very 
wealthy and populous, till its destruction by the Cartha¬ 
ginians in B. C. 405. It was here that the celebrated Pha- 
laris was “tyrant” in the Sixth Century B. C.—the despot 
said to have had a brazen bull, in which he roasted his 
victims alive. But the main interest and importance of 
Greek history in Sicily are centered in the great city of 
Syracuse, which was founded in B. C. 734 by a colony 
of Corinthians and other Dorians, and extended in time 
from an island, Ortygia, to the mainland opposite, when 
it consisted of five separate quarters, each with its own 
fortifications. It had two fine harbors and became a very 
large and flourishing city. In B. C. 485, after struggles 
between the aristocratic and democratic parties, Syracuse 
came under the sovereignty of Gelon, who greatly 
increased its power. In 480 (the year of Thermopylae and 
Salamis) he gained his great victory over the Carthagin¬ 
ians, who had invaded Sicily with an immense force, which 
was almost destroyed. The career of Syracuse was thus 
assured, but Gelon, a monarch of excellent character, a 
model “tyrant” (in the Greek sense of the word), died 
soon afterwards, in B. C. 478. He was succeeded by his 
brother, the famous Hieron or Hiero I, who reigned till 
B. C. 467. Under him Syracuse rose to her greatest pros- 

Voi,. 1 —10 


146 ANCIENT AND MEDIEVAL HISTORY 


perity, his chief exploit being a naval victory over the 
Etruscan fleet near Cumse, in B. C. 474. Hieron was a 
great patron of literature, and entertained at his court the 
poets /Eschylus and Pindar, the latter of whom has cele¬ 
brated in his odes the victories won by the chariots of the 
Syracusan King at the Olympian contests. Hiero’s 
brother, Thrasybulus, who succeeded, was driven out by 
the Syracusans for his tyranny (in the modern sense), and 
a democracy was established which continued for about 
sixty years. This ended in the triumph of Syracuse in 
B. C. 413, and in B. C. 405 the state fell under the absolute 
rule of Dionysius I (the elder), who reigned till B. C. 367. 

After conquering several Sicilian cities, Dionysius 
turned his arms in B. C. 397 against the old enemy of 
Sicily, the great, commercial Carthage. In 395 his fleet 
was beaten and he was besieged in Syracuse, but he drove 
the enemy off and destroyed their fleet, after a plague had 
reduced their strength. In 392 peace was made between 
Carthage and Syracuse, and for twenty-five years Diony¬ 
sius, till his death in B. C. 367, ruled Syracuse as the most 
powerful of Greek states in that quarter, commanding 
with her fleets the seas to east and west of Italy. He was 
a steady encourager of literature and the arts, and erected 
at Syracuse many fine temples and other buildings. His 
severe conduct and system of espionage against treachery, 
in the last part of his reign, have caused him to be de¬ 
nounced as a model of a bad despot, but he unquestionably 
did much for Syracuse. 

His son, Dionysius II (the younger), reigned at Syra¬ 
cuse from B. C. 367-356, and after losing and recovering, 
his power, again from B. C. 346-343. He was a weak 
and dissolute person, fond of theoretical philosophy and a 
friend of Plato and other teachers. He was expelled by 
Timoleon, who was despatched from Corinth, the mother 


HISTORY OF GREECE 


i47 


country of Syracuse, with an expedition to relieve Sicily 
from her troubles of internal dissension and dread of Car¬ 
thage. 

In B. C. 343 Syracuse thus became again a republic, 
and in B. C. 339 her strength was tested by a formidable 
Carthaginian invasion. An army of 80,000 men landed 
from Africa at Lilybseum, but was defeated by Timoleon 
with a force of one-sixth of that number. This brilliant 
victory saved Sicily, and Timoleon followed it up by the 
expulsion of almost all the ‘‘tyrants” from the Greek cities 
in the island, and the establishment of democracies in their 
stead. Timoleon ruled as virtual head of Syracuse and 
these other republics till B. C. 337, when he died, greatly 
regretted by the people. In B. C. 317 a wealthy citizen of 
Syracuse, named Agathocles, put down the democracy 
by force and treachery, backed by money, and became 
master not only of Syracuse, but of much of Sicily. He 
was a brilliant adventurer, who warred with success 
against the Carthaginians, defeating their troops in Africa, 
and reigning till B. C. 289. 

In B. C. 270, after factious times with a democracy, 
Hieron II, a descendant of Gelon, was chosen King, and 
long reigned with great advantage to his country. In 
B. C. 263 he made a treaty with Rome, and remained for 
nearly fifty years her faithful ally, being master of South¬ 
east Sicily, which enjoyed continued peace and prosperity. 
Hiero helped the Romans after their disasters of the sec¬ 
ond Punic war, and died, aged ninety-two, in B. C. 216, 
with the reputation of a wise, just, and moderate ruler. 
With him ended the prosperity and the freedom of Syra¬ 
cuse. 

His young and foolish grandson, Hieronymus, suc¬ 
ceeding to his power, joined Carthage against Rome, and 
the city of Syracuse was taken after the famous siege of 


148 ANCIENT AND MEDIAEVAL HISTORY 

two years’ duration by the Romans under Marcellus, B. C. 
212. It was on this occasion that Archimedes, the most 
famous of ancient mathematicians, exerted his inventive 
mechanical genius in defense of his native city. His intel¬ 
lectual powers were of the best kind, combining origin¬ 
ality, clearness of thought, and the gift of continuous and 
concentrated application. His killing by the Roman sol¬ 
dier, ignorant of his illustrious personality and irritated at 
the indifference of the philosopher to the drawn sword 
which threatened him, is well known. Syracuse then 
became a town of the Roman province of Sicily, and with 
her fall ends the history of Greek independence in the 
central Mediterranean. 

GRECIAN CIVILIZATION 

The importance of a nation is not to be measured by 
its duration as an independent power amongst the peoples 
of the world, but by what was effected in it for true free¬ 
dom and civilization within the limits of time assigned to 
its political and intellectual workings. The history of the 
Greeks as a leading people is brief, compared with that of 
many other nations, for its grand period lasted only for 
the Century and a half between the battle of Marathon, 
B. C. 490, and the subjugation of Greece by Philip, of 
Macedon, B. C. 338; but the interest belonging to it is 
enduring and engrossing. Greece gave to the world the 
first example of a democracy—the free, self-governing 
state in which every citizen not only feels a personal inter¬ 
est, but can always take a personal part, in the decision of 
questions intimately connected with his personal welfare 
as a member of a political community. 

In Oriental empires there was only a master and his 
subjects: in the Greek commonwealths the people decided 


HISTORY OF GREECE 


149 


and acted for themselves, and were politically responsible 
to themselves alone for the consequences of their actions. 
There can be little doubt that this condition of freedom 
had much to do with the expansion of the human mind 
and with the progress made in all the arts of civilization; 
but beyond and apart from that stimulus to improvement, 
there was in the Greeks a special genius, an inborn spirit. 
By “the Greek spirit” we mean the moral and intellectual 
character belonging to the best specimens of the Greek 
race—the Athenians and the Ionian race in general, 
though the Spartans, in their courage, military ardour, 
and resolve to be free from outward domination, claim a 
high place in the Hellenic world. In Greek life and Greek 
religion are seen two great features—the worship of the 
Beautiful and the worship of the Human. As regards the 
first, the Greek mind looked at the world only on its side of 
beauty. The Greek called the universe Kosmos, i. e., 
divine order or regularity. Greek religion became in its 
essence “a devotion to the fine arts. All man’s powers 
were given to producing works of the imagination. This 
was the inspiration of the Greeks—the arts became re¬ 
ligion, and religion ended in the arts.” As to the Greek 
worship of Humanity, “the Greek had strong human feel¬ 
ings and sympathies. He threw his own self into nature 
—humanized it—gave a human feeling to clouds, forests, 
rivers, seas. Rising above the idolatry of Egypt, he wor¬ 
shiped human power, human beauty, human life. In his 
conception of a god, he realized a beautiful human being— 
not merely animal beauty, but the intelligence which in¬ 
forms and shines through beauty. He thus moulded into 
the shape of gods the visions of earth, and made a glorious 
human being into his divinity. Light, under the condi¬ 
tions of humanity—The sun in human limbs arrayed’— 
this was the central object of Greek worship. The Hindu 


150 ANCIENT AND MEDIAEVAL HISTORY 

worshiped God as power: the Egyptian as life: the Greek 
as physical and intellectual beauty.” Thus, with a mind 
at once observant and creative, from the watching of 
nature the imaginative Greek developed his mythology, 
turning natural effects and phenomena—the rising and 
the setting of the sun, the rude northern blast, the mur¬ 
muring of the fountains, the rustle of the breeze in the 
foliage, the roar and movement of ocean, the quivering of 
the earthquakes, the outburst of the volcano—into the 
persons and action of the deities concerning whom the 
poets devised so many graceful and ingenious fictions. 

In general the Greeks were distinguished, firstly, by a 
national pride in the unity of the Hellenic race, as shown 
in a common language, a common religion, and a special 
character, superior to that which belonged to other nations, 
whom they regarded as “barbarian,” or non-Hellenic; 
secondly, by a quickness of sympathy which made them 
ever ready to laugh at a blunder, and to weep over a mis¬ 
fortune; to be indignant at injustice, and amused at knav¬ 
ery : to be awed by solemnity and tickled by absurdity; and 
thirdly, by a good taste and reasonable spirit, which made 
them, as a rule, avoid extremes in their thoughts, words, 
and actions. The grievous faults which their history 
shows them to have possessed were connected in a great 
measure with the excitability of their nature. They were 
very fond of power, and unscrupulous as to the means 
of obtaining it; their political jealousy gave rise to sedition 
and domestic warfare, especially in the minor states, in¬ 
volving unjust proscriptions and bloody revolutions, and 
brought about the great contest of the Peloponnesian 
War, which had effects so disastrous to the nation. They 
were often cruel, and had little regard for truth when any 
end was to be served by its violation. What they felt and 
did themselves they attributed also as feelings and actions 


HISTORY OF GREECE 


x 5* 

to the deities whom they worshiped, and, having no high 
spiritual standard of moral goodness, they degenerated, 
with the loss of political freedom, into a race of quick¬ 
witted, supple, and sensual slaves. The qualities which 
prevented the Greeks, with all their patriotism, courage, 
acuteness, activity, enterprise, industry, and taste, from 
becoming the masters of the world, which the Romans 
became, were the fickleness and restlessness, and the want 
of patient and steady resolution, so often found in the 
artistic nature. 

Though the gods of the Greek pantheon were beings 
that owed their origin to the observed phenomena of 
nature, they were, to the Greeks, individuals—not abstrac¬ 
tions, nor allegories, nor symbols. The earlier divinities 
of Greece clearly represent natural powers. Among these 
were Ouranos or Uranus (a name which is simply the 
Greek for heaven), Ge or Gaia (the. earth), Okeanos 
(ocean), Helios (the sun), Selene (the moon), Cronos 

(time). Ouranos and Gaia bore a family of gigantic 

* 

sons and daughters called Titans, who were overthrown 
by the race of gods, of whom Zeus was the chief—this 
“War of the gods” being supposed to represent the victory 
of reason and intelligence over the rude forces of nature. 

Zeus, identified with the Roman Jupiter, then appears 
as the head of the new divinities (the Olympic gods), 
who embody a spiritual meaning, retaining, however, 
natural elements and having a fixed relation to the powers 
of nature. Zeus has his lightnings and clouds. Hera, 
wife of Zeus, is goddess of maternity (the productive 
power of nature). Zeus is also the political god, the 
protector of morals and of hospitality. Poseidon has in 
his character the wildness of the sea; to him, too, is 
ascribed the production of the horse—no doubt from the 
white-crested waves that race on the main. Hades, the 


152 ANCIENT AND MEDIAEVAL HISTORY 

god of the lower world, the abode of the shades or disem¬ 
bodied spirits, was brother of Zeus and Poseidon—all 
three being children of Cronos and Rhea (the ‘‘Great 
Mother” or “Mother of the gods”), also called Cybele. 
In the new order of deities Zeus is represented as in a sense 
ruler of the other gods, but so that they are left free to 
display their own particular characters. 

Among the other chief deities were Ares, god of war; 
Apollo (Phoebus), god of prophecy, music, and later 
identified with the Sun-god (Helios). The worship of 
Apollo was really the chief worship of the Greeks, as the 
god of poetry, light, and intellectual power. He was the 
discerner and declarer of truth, as god of prophecy; the 
god of the song and dance, in which men show a free and 
joyous soul. In Greek art, Apollo appears in the perfec¬ 
tion of manly beauty, as in the famous statue known as 
the “Apollo Belvedere” in the Vatican Palace at Rome. 
Artemis is the great maiden-goddess, protectress of the 
young, devoted to the chase, and later, as twin-sister of 
Apollo, identified with the moon. Hermes was the herald 
or ambassador of the gods, and so is represented as patron 
of eloquence, prudence, shrewdness, and as the promoter 
of intercourse, commerce, and wealth. Athena, the great 
goddess of Athens, was the embodiment of power and wis¬ 
dom, the patroness of political communities, and of the 
arts that support the state, such as agriculture, weaving, 
etc.; the maintainer of law and order; she also was a 
maiden-goddess. Demeter was goddess of the earth and 
its fruits. Aphrodite, goddess of love and beauty, was 
especially worshiped in the Island of Cyprus, Hephaes¬ 
tus, god of fire, was the inventor and patron of artistic 
works in the metals. Dionysos, the youthful and hand¬ 
some god of wine, was held to be the patron of the tragic 



GRECIAN ACROPOLIS AT ATHENS. 





































HISTORY OF GREECE 153 

drama, which in Greece arose out of the choruses sung 
at his festivals. 

Minor deities included the nine Muses, the three 
Graces, and an endless variety of Nymphs of the sea, the 
forests, and the streams and fountains, with monsters 
hideous, grotesque, and fearful. Among the Greek 
divinities are Hes-tia, goddess of the domestic hearth, 
whose sacred fire burned on an altar in the building 
called the Prytaneum (the town-hall of a Greek com¬ 
munity), kept constantly alight, or, if extinguished, re¬ 
kindled only by the burning-glass or by friction, in the 
primitive way, with wood. She was a maiden-goddess, 
the guardian-deity of hearth and home, and at her altar 
in the inner part of every house was the shelter and safety 
of our mediaeval sanctuary for strangers, fugitives, and 
offending slaves. 

The deities had temples built in their honor, with the 
statue of the particular god or goddess placed on a pedestal 
within a central holy chamber, or shrine. In front of the 
statue was the altar, for the presentation of free-will offer¬ 
ings, consisting of the fruits of the earth, or of the burnt 
sacrifice of animals devoted to the worship of that god 
or goddess. Such offerings were also made to appease 
the anger of the deity, or in fulfilment of a vow, or at an 
oracle’s command, or for success in any enterprise in hand. 
Sprinkling of salted meal and pouring out (libation) of 
wine accompanied the sacrifice, at which the priest wore a 
wreath made of the foliage of a tree consecrated to the 
special deity worshipped. Dances and sacred hymns and 
invocations were also used, according to the nature of the 
service held. 

Greek superstition sought, through soothsayers, the 
knowledge of the will and purpose of the gods, by observa¬ 
tion of the flight and song of birds, and mainly by inspect 


154 ANCIENT AND MEDIAEVAL HISTORY 


tion of the healthy or disordered state of the inward parts 
of animals that had been slain in sacrifices. A great 
feature in Greek history is the belief in the revelation of 
the will of gods by oracles, or divine utterances, delivered 
at special places where special gods might be consulted 
through the priests attached to the spot. The great 
oracles of Greece were those of Apollo at Delphi, in Phocis, 
and of Zeus at Dodona, in Epirus. Delphi was a town 
on the southern slope of Mount Parnassus, near to the spot 
where, from between two peaked cliffs, the limpid spring 
of Castalia issued. The temple of Apollo was resorted to 
by messengers sent by cities, nations, tribes, and individ¬ 
uals, anxious to learn futurity, and bringing offerings as 
a fee for knowledge given. 

The priestess of the oracle (called Pytliia, from Pytho, 
ancient name of Delphi) sat on a tripod, over a fissure in 
the ground at the center of the temple. An intoxicating 
gas issued from the opening, and caused the priestess, 
when she breathed it, to rave in dark sayings, which the 
attendant priests wrote down in verse, and furnished, as 
Apollo’s revelation, to the person sent in consultation. 
The doubtful meaning of these oracular responses has 
become proverbial from many instances in Grecian history. 
The responses at Dodona were founded on the rustling 
sounds caused by the wind among the foliage of holy 
trees. 

The famous “Eleusinian Mysteries” were celebrated at 
the town of Eleusis, in Attica, in honor of the goddess 
Demeter. They were of solemn import, with a secret, 
awe-inspiring ceremonial, at which mysterious doctrines 
were taught by priests to the initiated worshippers, includ¬ 
ing that of an immortal life for the soul of man. The 
Dionysia at Athens was the great spring festival of 
Dionysos, resorted to by visitors from every quarter of the 


HISTORY OF GREECE 


*55 

Greek world. The whole city was given up to crowds, 
processions, and masquerade-attire, with gay and noisy 
revelry of wine and music. The interest of the modern 
world in these proceedings comes from the fact that at 
this festival there were performed, in competition for 
prizes, in the great theater of Dionysos, those tragedies 
and comedies of which we have such splendid specimens 
in the extant Attic literature. The Panathensea was 
another famous festival at Athens, in honor of Athene- 
Pallas, guardian goddess of the state. In this imposing 
pageant Athenian maidens, bearing a sacred gold-em¬ 
broidered garment (woven by them for the goddess, and 
called the Peplus), took a chief part. 

Amongst the great special features of Greek life were 
the four national assemblies, composed of visitors from 
every part of the Hellenic world, known as the Olympic, 
Pythian, Nemean, and Isthmian games. These were 
really great religious festivals, at which the Hellenes met 
in a common worship, to share in a common amusement. 
The Olympic festival was celebated in honor of Zeus, at 
the Plain of Olympia, in Elis, every four years. Greek 
chronology begins in B. C. 776, the year in which a man 
of Elis, named Corsebus, gained the victory in the foot¬ 
race at these games. The Pythian festival was in Apollo’s 
honor, held near Delphi, in the third year of each Olym¬ 
piad. The Nemean, in honor of Zeus, was held every 
second year, in the valley of Nemea, in Argolis. The 
Isthmian, in honor of Poseidon, took place also every 
second year, at the Isthmus of Corinth. At these national 
contests prizes were given to the victorious competitors in 
running, leaping, wrestling, boxing, and chariot-racing, 
and also (in the Pythian, Nemean, and Isthmian) for 
music and poetry. The prize was a simple wreath, placed 
on the victor’s head, and made of the special sacred plant 


156 ANCIENT AND MEDIEVAL HISTORY 

or tree belonging to the god—at the Olympian games, of 
olive; at the Pythian, of bay; at the Nemean, of parsley; 
at the Isthmian, of pine. The honor of this wreath was 
great, bringing fame to the victor’s native city, and re¬ 
nown, through sculptor and through poet, to himself. 

These great gatherings of people of Hellenic race were 
of a nature and importance peculiar to the nation and its 
culture. The arts and the graces of civilization were all 
concerned in them, and “to the sacred ground flocked all 
the power, and the rank, and the wealth, and the intellect 
of Greece.” Apart from the athletic sports of the occa¬ 
sion, the meeting did for Greece what, in the modern 
world, is done by the art exhibition, the scientific congress, 
the publisher, and the platform. Works of the chisel and 
the brush were shown, ideas exchanged, theories discussed, 
poems recited, and philosophers heard. The people met in 
one grand intellectual, social, artistic, and gymnastic 
assembly, which had great use in fostering a common 
national pride, a sound physical training, intellectual vigor 
and emulation, and a healthy desire for success in every 
kind of competition, where the reward consisted chiefly in 
the high opinions won from fellow-men. 

The literature of Greece is the chief treasure which 
has come down to us from ancient times, apart from the 
Hebrew writings of the Old Testament and from the New 
Testament Books. In original power, and in richness, 
beauty, and force, it far surpasses that of Rome, to whose 
writers, indeed, their Greek predecessors served, in some 
styles, as incomparable models of literary art. The litera¬ 
ture of Egypt, Assyria, Babylonia, and Phoenicia has all 
but perished—the Zend-Avesta, containing the sacred 
books of Persia, has little merit; the Hindu books called 
Vedas, in the old Sanskrit tongue, are wanting in general 
interest. The Sanskrit epic poems called the Ramayana 


HISTORY OF GREECE 


*57 


and the Mahabharata have beautiful and striking episodes: 
the lyric and the proverbial poetry of the ancient Hindus 
show much true, tender sentiment, some beautiful descrip¬ 
tions of nature, and not a little depth of wisdom. The 
Hindu drama has much merit, but is not to be named with 
the productions of modern Europe and of ancient Greece. 
But, at their best, the literary products of the Hindu mind 
differ, not merely in degree, but in kind, not only in form 
but in essence, from those consummate works, those per¬ 
fect specimens of thought and style, to which the Hellenic 
intellect gave birth. 

The Greeks were the first people who gave their minds 
to thinking out a subject on a systematic plan. Greek 
taste—in its acute perception of true elegance and beauty, 
its hatred of extremes, its instinctive love of symmetry 
and fitness, its clear simplicity and avoidance of false orna¬ 
ment and color—gave to Greek thought that form and 
finish in expression which the best moderns can rarely 
attain to, and can never hope to surpass. For the thought 
of Greek writers it is enough to say that what they did, in 
some great branches, such as history, logic, and ethics, 
forms the foundation still for modern treatment of those 
topics. The language—wondrous for beauty, wealth, 
precision, power, and grace—which the Hellenic genius 
moulded into the finest instrument of human utterance 

that the world has ever known, enabled this most creative 
and original of nations to give to its conceptions the fittest 

garb of literary art. 

The two great Homeric poems—the “Iliad” and the 
“Odyssey”—are, of European literature, the first in time, 
and of all literature the highest in merit, among composi¬ 
tions in epic style. They were productions of Greek in¬ 
tellect, dating perhaps from B. C. 800 or 900, handed down 
orally in public recitation, changed in transmission, and 


158 ANCIENT AND MEDIAEVAL HISTORY 


first written, in their present form, under Pisistratus at 
Athens in the Sixth Century B. C. They represent, in 
language, Ionian Greek, with a slight mixture of H^olic, 
as it was spoken and written about B. C. 600. In Greece 
these writings were the foundation of poetical literature, 
and were taught in every school; for all time since they 
have been, in their full, fresh beauty, stores of poetic 
imagery, models of epic art. Another school of epic 
poetry began with Hesiod, born at the village of Ascra, 
in Boeotia, about the middle of the Eighth Century B. C. 
His poem, “Works and Days,” is a didactic, homely com¬ 
position, dealing with daily life, religious lore, and moral 
precepts. This is in striking contrast to the Homeric 
epic, whose themes are chiefly deeds of gods and heroes, 
lit up with all the splendor of imaginative power. 

New styles of poetry came into existence between the 
Eighth and the Sixth Centuries B. C., as the Hellenic 
world passed from the monarchy of the times that epic 
poetry represented to the republics where democracies or 
oligarchs held sway. The verse called Elegy expressed, 
in ancient Greece, the poet’s views on home and foreign 
politics, or social life, or gave his feelings vent in joy or 
grief for what was passing in the world around him. Its 
chief exponents were the Ionian Tyrtaeus, who lived and 
wrote at Sparta about B. C. 680, urging the Spartans, in 
lays of which some parts remain, to war against her foe- 
men of Messene; Mimnermus, of Smyrna (B. C. 630- 
600), a poet of the doleful side of elegy; Solon, the great 
Athenian (B. C. 640-560), who wrote poetry, sportive 
and sober, both before and after his grand political 
achievement; Theognis, of Megara (flourished about B. C. 
540), a writer of political and festive verse; and Simon¬ 
ides, of Ceos, who lived at Athens and at Syracuse (with 
Hiero I) about B. C. 520-470. He wrote the elegy on 


HISTORY OF GREECE 


*59 

those who fell at Marathon, and the epigrams upon the 
tomb of the Spartans at Thermopylae, and was renowned 
for sweetness and for finish in his style. Most of the 
elegiac, as of the lyric and iambic, poetry of old Greece 
was lost in the destruction of the great library at Alexan¬ 
dria in the Seventh Century A. D. 

Iambic verse was used for satirical poems, and those 
of weightier and sharper thought than elegy embodied. 
In this style Archilochus, of Paros (about B. C. 710-680), 
was noted for the bitterness and power of his invective; 
Solon employed it in political discussion. 

The lyric poetry of old Greece—the verse expressing 
human passion, and, with the Greeks, invariably sung to 
the music of the lyre—this was one of the greatest glories 
of her literary art, and its almost total loss is, perhaps, the 
one most to be lamented in the history of letters. Of verse 
»n this style the chief singers were Aleman, Sappho, 
Alcaeus, Anacreon, Simonides of Ceos, and Pindar — all 
save the last, known to us only in mere fragments or by 
Roman imitations. Of these, Aleman of Sparta (about 
B. C. 660), wrote hymns and love-songs, marriage odes, 
and verse for festival processions; Sappho of Lesbos, 
flourished about B. C. 600, has given her name to the 
stanza (Sapphic) familiar to us in the odes of Horace, 
and has the highest fame for passion, energy, and music 
in her poetry; Alcaeus, of Mitylene (in Lesbos), wrote 
about B. C. 610-580, gave his name to the well-known 
Alcaic stanza of Horace’s odes, and wrote on war, love, 
'drinking, politics, and gods, with free and graceful gaiety 
and force; Anacreon of Teos (on the Ionian coast of Asia 
Minor), lived about B. C. 520, and wrote with easy grace 
and sweetness on love, and wine, and music; Simonides of 
Ceos was very popular in lyric strains for hymns and 
dirges, and odes on victors in the games. 


160 . ANCIENT AND MEDIAEVAL HISTORY 


Pindar, who lived from about B. C. 520-440, has 
reached us in a fairly complete form as regards one por¬ 
tion of his poems—the Epinicia, or triumphal odes written 
for victors in the Olympian, Pythian, Nemean, and Isth¬ 
mian games. This great poet was born near Thebes, 
trained for his art at Athens, and accepted by all Greece 
as a national writer of the lyric school. It is impossible 
for modern readers of his difficult writing to judge fairly 
of his merits as a poet, destitute as we are of the music 
which gave full effect to the words, and of his poetry in 
other lyric forms. 

The Greek drama is regarded by many as the highest 
expression of Attic literary genius. The plays, very dif¬ 
ferent from ours, were exhibited in immense structures 
open to the air, and in the daytime; and at Athens the 
expense of the performance was borne by some wealthy 
man. It was the worship of Dionysos that gave rise both 
to tragedy and comedy. From the hymns sung in chorus 
at his festivals arose the drama, or “poetry of action,” 
when the leader of the chorus assumed the character of 
Dionysos, and described with gestures some exploit of the 
god, or enacted the part of any person engaged in the 
adventure which his words described. The exclamations 
and remarks of the chorus would, with the leader’s utter¬ 
ances, form dialogues, and here is found the germ of what 
we call a play. Thespis, the father of Greek tragedy, at 
a festival of the year B. C. 535, introduced an independent 
actor, with whom the leader of the chorus held a dialogue 
during the pauses of the choral song. 

Phrynichus (flourished about B. C. 510480) is re¬ 
garded by many as the real inventor of tragedy, from his 
improvements in the character of the subjects treated. 
Instead of the stories, often of a ludicrous turn, about 
Dionysos, he selected as his theme some story of the heroic 


HISTORY OF GREECE 


161 

age of Greece, or some event of recent times. The intro¬ 
duction by the poet iEschylus, born B. C. 525, of a sec¬ 
ond actor, making the dialogue entirely independent of the 
chorus, gave its true lasting form to the dramatic art. 
Action could now be represented in completeness before 
the eye, accompanied by speech, and this is the drama as 
it has been in Europe ever since the age of Pericles in 
Greece. The works of Thespis and of Phrynichus are 
lost, and the grand Greek tragedy survives in a few of 
probably the best plays of its chief authors, H^schylus, 
Sophocles, and Euripides, who succeeded each other in the 
order given, Sophocles being born in B. C. 495, and Eurip¬ 
ides in B. C. 480. /Eschylus had grandeur, Sophocles 
grace, and Euripides subtlety and pathos. The word 
tragedy means goat-song, as connected with the offering 
of a goat (an animal injurious to vines) to Dionysos 
before the singing of the choral hymn. From rude begin¬ 
nings Attic genius thus carried the dramatic art, within 
half a century’s space, to the highest point of its develop¬ 
ment in ancient times. 

Greek comedy (meaning the village-song, from the 
hymn sung and the jokes made at the rustic festivals of 
Dionysos) sprang from the same worship of the god of 
wine as tragedy. The comic drama began earlier, and 
was longer in arriving at perfection than the tragic. The 
farces of Susarion of Megara were introduced into Attica 
about B. C. 580, but the first great writer in Athenian 
comedy is Cratinus (his first play appearing B. C. 454), 
who used that style of drama as a means of personal satire, 
and for the censure of political shortcomings. He was 
followed by Eupolis (his first play appearing about B. C. 
430), who is declared to have been great in elegance of 
style and bitterness of satire. The works of these two 

dramatists are lost, but we have the means of personally 
Voj y . 1 —11 


162 ancient and mediaeval history 


judging of the Attic comedy in the eleven extant plays of 
one of its greatest authors, Aristophanes. He flourished 
between about B. C. 425 and 388, and his plays are marked 
by fanciful extravagance, delicate humor, keen satire, 
beautiful poetry, and gross expression—a medley of 
incongruous display, pervaded by a serious purpose, and 
directed by genius of a high and very peculiar order. 
Thus far the Attic comedy is known as the “Old Comedy,” 
consisting of plays which were mainly vehicles of political 
satire and personal attack, and of this alone have we any 
complete specimens left. The “Middle Comedy,” which 
flourished from about B. C. 390-320, dealt rather in criti¬ 
cism on literature and philosophy, and was succeeded by 
the “New Comedy,” most nearly answering to the modern 
comic drama, or the “comedy of manners.” The best 
writers of this school came between about B. C. 320 and 
250, and of one of them, Menander, we can partly judge 
in the plays of his Roman imitator or translator, Terence. 
He is credited with great elegance of style and with abun¬ 
dant humor. Menander died at Athens in B. C. 291. 
Diphilus and Philemon, contemporary with him, were also 
eminent writers in his vein. 

Poetry, with the Greeks, had reached perfection before 
real literary prose appeared at all. The first great his¬ 
torian, Herodotus, was born at the Dorian city of Hali¬ 
carnassus, in the southwest of Asia Minor, in B. C. 484. 
He was, at any rate in culture and in language, an Ionian 
Greek, and lived at Athens for some years about B. C. 
445, in the best part of the age of Pericles. His great 
work, in nine books, on the wars between the Greeks and 
Persians, contains a geographical, social, and historical 
account of much of the civilized world of Europe, Africa, 
and Asia, through which the author traveled during many 
years. The style of Herodotus is charming in its clear- 


HISTORY OF GREECE 


163 

ness, liveliness, and grace, and modern research has con¬ 
stantly confirmed what he relates on matters subject to his 
personal observation. Thucydides, the Athenian, one of 
the greatest of all historians, was born in B. C. 471, and 
wrote in eight books (the last unfinished) an account of 
much of the great Peloponnesian War, which occurred in 
his own time. He is renowned for the accuracy of his 
statements, the depth and acuteness of his philosophical 
remarks, and the brevity, vigor, and energy of his style. 
Xenophon, the Athenian, lived from about B. C. 430-350, 
and has a pleasing, perspicuous, and easy method of writ¬ 
ing on historical and other subjects. His Hellenica 
(“Greek Events”) takes up the history where Thucydides 
ends, and brings it down to the battle of Mantinea, B. C. 
362. The Cyropaedia (“training of Cyrus”) is a political 
romance about Cyrus, founder of the Persian monarchy. 
Xenophon’s most famous and attractive work is the Anab¬ 
asis, an account in seven books of the expedition of the 
10,000 Greeks in Asia, B. C. 401-399. The Memorabilia 
contains an account of Socrates and his teaching, exhibited 
in conversations between the philosopher and various 
hearers. 

From history we pass to oratory, which reached in 
Pericles a height that we can judge of now only by frag¬ 
ments reported by Thucydides and others. The names of 
the great Attic orators are Antiphon, Andocides, Lysias, 
Isocrates, Isseus, Hypercides, yEschines, and Demos¬ 
thenes, the last being esteemed one of the greatest masters 
of the art that men have ever heard. 

The two great philosophical writers of Greece are 
Plato and Aristotle. Plato, the Athenian, the greatest 
pupil of Socrates, flourished for fifty years, from about 
B. C. 400-350, and is the finest artist in the handling of 
dialogue for philosophical discussion that has ever lived. 


164 ANCIENT AND MEDIEVAL HISTORY 


His style is a poetic prose of wondrous beauty, ease, and 
grace. Aristotle, of Stagira, in Thrace, lived from B. C. 
384-322; he was the private tutor of Alexander the Great. 
He lived at Athens for over ten years in the last part of his 
life, and there wrote the extensive works which have come 
down to us under his name. Of all the writings of 
antiquity those of Aristotle have most directly and exten¬ 
sively influenced the thought of the modem world. He 
discussed nearly every subject known to mankind as the 
world was then. He wrote on rhetoric, ethics, politics, 
poetry, and natural history, and was the founder of logic, 
or the science of reasoning, and inventor of the syllogistic 
process in discussion. His system of philosophy main¬ 
tained its ground in Europe until the last half of the 
Sixteenth Century A. D. For twenty years (B. C. 367- 
347, the year of Plato's death) in the early part of his 
life Aristotle lived at Athens, and was the greatest of the 
pupils of Plato.* 

The Ionian, Thales of Miletus, on the southwest coast 
of Asia Minor, one of the “Seven Wise Men” of Greece, 
lived from about B. C. 630-540. He was a founder in 
Greece of the study of philosophy and mathematics, and is 
said to have visited Egypt, and to have derived thence 
some of his mathematical knowledge. In explaining the 
origin of the universe he taught that water was the element 
from which all things originated, and into which all would 
be finally resolved. Anaximander of Miletus (lived B. C. 
610-547) succeeded Thales in the Ionian school of philoso¬ 
phy. He was a great observer of nature, and devoted to 
mathematics, astronomy, and geography. Pythagoras of 
Samos flourished about B. C. 540-510. He is credited 
with geometrical discoveries, undoubtedly held the doc¬ 
trine of the transmigration of souls, and was a man of 

*See volume of World’s Great Philosophers. 


HISTORY OF GREECE 


165 


great powers. The blind belief of his followers in all that 
he asserted passed into the famous proverb, “Ipse dixit” 
(himself said it). Hippocrates of Cos (lived about B. C. 
460-360) was the greatest physician of ancient times. 
The writings extant under his name were mostly composed 
by his disciples. He was a man of deep thought and 
extensive experience, whose medical theories contain much 
good sense and truth. The famous saying, “Life is short 
and Art is long,” is one of his maxims. 

The Ionian, Anaxagoras of Clazomense lived from 
B. C. 500-428, and passed, from an early manhood to 
middle age, thirty years at Athens as the close friend and 
the instructor of Pericles, Euripides, and others. The 
great advance made by Anaxagoras in seeking out the 
origin of things was this—that whereas his predecessors 
referred all things to some pre-existing form of matter 
(as Thales did to water), he sought the final cause in 
Mind (Greek nous), Intelligence, or Thought. For thus 
advancing what was much like the idea of the One God, 
Anaxagoras was accused at Athens of atheism, or refusal 
of belief in any god; his offense really being, in Athenian 
eyes, his denial of the Sun-god, Apollo. He was con¬ 
demned to death in B. C. 450, but, through the eloquent 
intercession of Pericles, the sentence was commuted to a 
fine and banishment from Athens. 

Socrates,* the great Athenian philosopher, lived from 
B. C. 469-399, a period covering much of the age of Per¬ 
icles, and the whole time of the Peloponnesian War. No 
man of ancient times is better known to us in his person, 
character, and teaching, though he left nothing written, 
and what we know is derived from the affectionate regard 
of his illustrious pupil, Plato, and his devoted admirer, 
Xenophon. 

♦See volume of World’s Great Philosophers. 


i66 ANCIENT AND MEDIEVAL HISTORY 


In the later period of the history of Greece we find 
established four chief schools or systems of philosophy. 
These were the Academic, the Epicurean, the Stoic, the 
Peripatetic.* The famous sect of the Cynic philosophers, 
which was founded at Athens about B. C. 390 by a disciple 
of Socrates named Antisthenes, as is also the most cele¬ 
brated adherent of this unamiable system of the Cynics, 
Diogenes of Sinope, both fully treated in the volume 
World’s Great Philosophers. 

The four fine arts are architecture, sculpture, painting, 
and music. Of Greek music we know little: of Greek 
painting we read much, but have no remains: of Greek 
architecture and sculpture we have remains, and know 
this—that the ancient Greeks were and are the greatest 
artists that have ever lived. The buildings in which the 
Greek mind and taste effected their chief architectural 
results were the temples of the gods, and here we find 
three chief styles—the Doric, Ionic, and Corinthian—dis¬ 
tinguished chiefly by the columns and their capitals. The 
great examples still surviving in the Doric order are the 
Temple of Paestum (near Salerno, in Italy), built in the 
pure Doric style about the Sixth Century B. C., and the 
Parthenon (i. e., “house of the virgin-goddess,” Athena, 
from parthenos, a virgin), in the Acropolis or citadel at 
Athens, finished, under the rule of Pericles, in B. C. 438. 
It was built of pure white marble from the quarry of 
Mount Pentelicus, near the city, and its front was adorned 
with the sculptures of Phidias, of which portions are now 
in the British Museum. The Parthenon is proverbial as a 
model of beauty, unequaled as an instance of what can be 
effected by the application of intellect to stone for the 
production of an appropriate and tasteful building. The 
architects of this grand work were Ictinus and Callicrates. 

♦For description of which, see Vol. World’s Great Philosophers. 


HISTORY OF GREECE 


167 

The chief Ionic temple was that of Artemis at Ephesus, 
built in the Sixth Century B. C., and burned in B. C. 356. 
The richly-ornamented Corinthian order is illustrated in 
the “Monument of Lysicrates,” and in the great temple 
of Zeus Olympius at Athens. 

If there be one art in which, beyond what they achieved 
in other ways, this wonderful people, the ancient Greeks, 
attained pre-eminent perfection, it was in the noble art 
of sculpture—the reproduction, in the pure marble of their 
land, of the forms of the lower animals and man, and the 
representation of their gods, goddesses, and other beings 
imagined in their infinite and fanciful mythology. 
Among the Greeks the human form, as represented in 
sculptures still existing, reached the perfection of beauty 
and symmetry. Oliver Wendell Holmes says: “The 
Greek young men were of supreme beauty. Their close 
curls, their elegantly-set heads, column-like necks, straight 
noses, short, curled lips, firm chins, deep chests, light flanks, 
large muscles, small joints, were finer than anything we 
ever see. It may be questioned whether the human shape 
will ever present itself again in a race of such perfect sym¬ 
metry.” Such were the almost godlike forms that Greek 
sculptors, with unrivaled skill, set themselves to reproduce 
in marble for the honor of their deities and the delectation 
of the eyes of men. Phidias was the main agent in what 
was then effected for the glory of the gods and of the art 
to which Athens was devoted as part of her religion and 
her life. Within the Parthenon was Phidias' great statue 
of the goddess Athena, over forty feet in height, with face, 
neck, arms, hands, and feet of ivory, set off with painting, 
and her drapery constructed of small plates of pure gold. 
The sculptures which adorned the fabric of the Parthenon 
were designed by Phidias, and, in their mutilated state, 
display much of their original loveliness and power. On 


168 ANCIENT AND MEDIAEVAL HISTORY 

the Acropolis were two other statues of Athena from the 
hand of Phidias—one of bronze, considered his best work 
by some ancient critics; the other a colossal statue, also of 
bronze, called the Athena Promachos (i. e., ‘‘the cham¬ 
pion-goddess,” as defender of Athens), of which the 
helmet-crest and spear-point could be discerned from far 
away at sea. This statue represented the goddess as 
holding up both spear and shield in a fighting attitude, 
and was made of the spoils of Marathon. Another re¬ 
nowned work of Phidias was his colossal figure of Zeus, 
in the temple of the chief Olympian god in the sacred grove 
of Elis (Peloponnesus). This was composed of ivory 
and gold—the face, feet, and body of ivory, the hair and 
beard of pure gold, the eyes of precious flaming jewels. 
The drapery was of beaten gold, enameled with figures of 
animals and flowers. The god was seated on a sculptured 
throne of cedar, inlaid with gold, ivory, ebony, and jewels, 
and the figure was sixty feet in height. Upon the head 
was a chaplet of olive; in the right hand an image of Nike 
(the winged goddess of victory), also of ivory and gold; 
in the left a polished sceptre, inlaid with several metals, 
and bearing an eagle (the symbol of Zeus) on the top. 
The throne, and the pedestal of the whole, were adorned 
with the elaborate and beautiful sculptures of mythological 
subjects. This marvelous effort of genius was removed 
to Constantinople, and perished there by fire in A. D. 

475 - 

The sculptor and architect, Polycletus, of Sicyon, who 
flourished about B. C. 452-412, was one of the greatest 
artists of that great age. He was unsurpassed in the 
human figure, as Phidias was in the images of the gods. 
In the temple of Hera, near Argos, was his famous statue 
of the goddess, in ivory and gold, executed in rivalry of 
Phidias’ works. One of the statues of Polycletus was that 





ROMAN CHARIOT RACE 
Painting by U. Checa 






HISTORY OF GREECE 


169 


of a manly youth holding a spear, and was so symmetrical 
that it became the standard of proportion, and was called 
the Canon, as being a “rule” or model of form. The 
Bceotian sculptor Myron, who worked about B. C. 430, 
was wonderful in bronze representations of animals and 
of the human figure in difficult and momentary attitudes. 
The famous “Discobolus” (“quoit-thrower”) in the mu¬ 
seums of art, is a reproduction in marble of one of Myron’s 
figures; and his lowing Cow is celebrated in the Greek 
epigrams as a perfect work of the kind. In a later time 
than that of Phidias came Praxiteles, of Athens (about 
B. C. 350), famous for the human form, especially the 
female, in exquisite beauty and grace of execution. His 
greatest work was his statue of Aphrodite in her temple 
at Cnidus, in Caria (southwest coast of Asia Minor). 
Travelers went thither from all parts of the world 
expressly to see this masterpiece of sculptured loveliness. 
This also perished by fire at Constantinople in the Sixth 
Century A. D. Scopas of Paros (the island in the 
Cyclades famous for the marble used by many of these 
ancient sculptors) flourished about B. C. 380, and was a 
rival of Praxiteles in this second period of perfect Greek 
art. He was employed on the bas-reliefs of the Mau¬ 
soleum at Halicarnassus, of which a portion is to be seen 
in the British Museum. A famous group of Scopas rep¬ 
resents the destruction of the children of Niobe; a part of 
this work is in the gallery at Florence. Lysippus of 
Sicyon, in the time of Alexander the Great—worked 
chiefly in bronze, and made many statues of Alexander, 
who would allow no other artist to represent him in sculp¬ 
ture. 

Of Greek painting we have no specimens, but they 
attained great excellence in the art. As in Egypt, this 
mode of decoration originally accompanied sculpture and 


170 ANCIENT AND MEDIEVAL HISTORY 


architecture in the temples and statues of the gods. 
Among the earlier Greek painters was Micon of Athens 
(about B. C. 460) and Polygnotus of Thasos, who was 
also an Athenian citizen, and flourished at Athens from 
about B. C. 463-430. His subjects were mostly Homeric, 
and were painted on wooden panels, afterward inserted 
into the walls which they adorned. Apollodorus of 
Athens (flourished about B. C. 410) greatly improved 
the art in coloring and by knowledge of light and shade. 
Zeuxis of Heraclea (probably the city so named in 
Bithynia, on the Euxine Sea) lived about B. C. 424-400. 
He painted a wonderful picture of Helen of Troy for the 
temple of Juno at Croton, and, in realistic art, is the hero 
of the story about the grapes so naturally painted that the 
birds flew at the fruit to peck. His rival, Parrhasius of 
Ephesus, who flourished about B. C. 400, and chiefly 
painted at Athens, brought the proportion of his figures 
to a perfection which all subsequent artists made their 
model. He is said, in the imitative line, to have painted 
a curtain, apparently drawn in front of a picture, so as to 
deceive Zeuxis, who desired him “to draw it that he might 
see the picture.” Timanthes, of Sicyon, also painted at 
about B. C. 400, and was the artist of the celebrated picture 
of the Sacrifice of Iphigeneia, in which her father, Aga¬ 
memnon, was painted with his face hidden in his robe. 
The greatest of Greek painters is said to have been Apelles, 
of Ionia, the friend of Alexander the Great, who would 
allow none other to paint his portrait. He was especially 
skillful in and devoted to drawing, his diligence in which 
gave rise to the proverb, Nulla dies sine linea (“No day 
without at least a line”). He painted Alexander wielding 
a thunderbolt, and the famous “Aphrodite Anadyomene 
(“Aphrodite rising up,” i. e., out of the sea-foam, accord¬ 
ing to the poets’ legend as to her creation), in which the 


HISTORY OF GREECE 


! 7 * 

goddess was shown wringing her hair, while the falling 
drops made a translucent silvery veil around her. Protog¬ 
enes of Caria flourished from B. C. 332 to 300, and resided 
chiefly at Rhodes, though he also visited Athens. He was 
brought into notice by Apelles, and was famous for the 
elaboration bestowed on his admirable pictures. Nicias 
of Athens worked there about B. C. 320, and was a dis¬ 
tinguished painter in encaustic, a style in which the colors 
were burned into the panel by the application of heat in 
some form. His master Euphranor flourished at Athens 
about B. C. 336, and was excellent in proportion and color¬ 
ings, being also a distinguished sculptor. Pausias of 
Sicyon (flourished about B. C. 360-330) was great At 
encaustic painting, and executed beautiful panel-pictures 
on a small scale, representing children, animals, and 
flowers. 

In the Homeric poems there is mention of the lyre 
(originally a three-stringed instrument, as in Egypt), the 
flute, and the Pan-pipe. The father of Greek music is 
said to have been Terpander of Lesbos, who lived between 
B. C. 700 and B. C. 650. He established at Sparta the 
first musical school that existed in Greece. To the four¬ 
stringed lyre, as he found it, Terpander added three 
strings, and the music of this improved instrument became 
highly popular. He was succeeded by Thaletas of Crete, 
who also founded a musical school at Sparta, and had great 
influence there, derived from the power of his art over 
the minds of the citizens in a time of factious strife. There 
were musical contests at the great national festivals, and 
the poet Archilochus of Paros (as Terpander also did) car¬ 
ried off prizes for music at the Pythian games. Timo- 
theus of Miletus (lived B. C. 446-357) was a celebrated 
musician, and added four strings to the lyre, making it 
an eleven-stringed instrument. Fie greatly changed 


173 ANCIENT AND MEDIAEVAL HISTORY 

instrumental music, which became highly artificial and 
intricate under his treatment. At Athens, in the time of 
Pericles, music was a necessary part of education, and 
ignorance of the art was held to be a disgrace. Pericles 
encouraged it by erecting the Odeum, a building for 
rehearsals of the choral music before the theatrical per¬ 
formances. Flute-playing became very fashionable at that 
epoch, and large sums were given for a single noted instru¬ 
ment. So elaborate, difficult, and artificial did the exe¬ 
cution in flute-playing become, as to arouse the hostility 
of Aristotle against music generally. We have no mate¬ 
rials on which to ground any judgment as to the scientific 
character of the Greek harmony; we can only conclude 
that a people so ingenious and artistic in other ways, so 
devoted to poetry, and having in their religious rites and 
social meetings so many fit occasions for the practice of 
the musical art, must have made great advances therein. 

In the age of Pericles, at Athens, the Greek mode of 
life was marked by a dignified and elegant simplicity of 
tone. Every free citizen was one of the rulers of the state 
through his vote in the assembly and the law courts; and 
though there was an aristocracy of birth and long descent 
in certain families who traced their lineage back to heroic 
times, there was little exclusiveness in social life. An 
Athenian might be poor, but if he had general ability, wit, 
or artistic skill, he was welcome in the best houses of 
Athens. The only occupations worthy of a freeman were 
held to be agriculture, arms, gymnastics, the fine arts, and 
state-duties, retail trade and handicrafts being mainly in 
the hands of foreigners (who were heavily taxed by the 
state) and of slaves. The poorer citizens, who took their 
fees, amounting to about ten cents per day, for their dis¬ 
charge of public duty as jurors, looked down on the 
mechanic and tradesman. Almost the whole range of 


HISTORY OF GREECE 


*73 


social pleasures was mixed up with the religion of the peo¬ 
ple. The worship consisted of the songs and dances, pro¬ 
cessions, festivals, dramatic and athletic contests, and the 
people in general were satisfied with the belief in the 
recognized deities, along with the gratifications involved 
in the observance of the state-religion. Moral and relig¬ 
ious problems were left to be settled by the philosophers 
and the serious-minded minority who followed them. 

The Athenian citizen was a very sociable person. He 
rose early, took a slight meal of bread and wine, and went 
off to make morning-calls, or to attend to public business 
in the assembly or the law court. A mid-day breakfast 
was eaten, and then came gossip in the colonnades, the 
gymnasia, the agora (market-place), and the studios of 
artists, or a stroll down to the harbor called Piraeus, four- 
miles distant, connected with Athens by the famous Long 
Walls built under the rule of Pericles. The principal meal 
of the day was a four-o’clock dinner, at which the better 
classes ate meat (beef, mutton, kid, or pork), fish (espe¬ 
cially salt fish), wheaten bread, vegetables, fruit, and 
sweetmeats, drinking their wine mixed in various propor¬ 
tions with water. Hare was the favorite game, and 
thrushes among birds; eggs, fowls, olive-oil, and cheese 
were much used. The guests reclined by twos or threes 
on couches, using their fingers and spoons for eating, wip¬ 
ing their hands on pieces of dough-cake, and washing them 
when dinner was over. Wreaths of flowers were worn at 
dinner-parties, healths drunk, dancing-girls, flute-girls, 
jugglers, and professional jesters introduced. 

The Greek dress was simple, consisting of two gar¬ 
ments only, as a rule, for either sex—an under-garment 
covered by an outer flowing robe. Sandals were worn 
abroad, bare feet or slippers being the use at home. The 
poorer class lived on the fruits of the country—figs, grapes, 


1 74 ANCIENT AND MEDIAEVAL HISTORY 


and olives—cheese, garlic, and barleybread, with occas¬ 
ional meat from the public sacrifices. Greek women of 
the upper class lived, in the main, the secluded life of 
Eastern harems at the present day, residing in their own 
apartments, and receiving there the visits only of other 
ladies, and of their nearest male relatives. Wool-carding, 
weaving, embroidery, and spinning were their employ¬ 
ments ; attendance at the great religious festivals, includ¬ 
ing an occasional tragic play at the Dionysia, were their 
amusements. 

The Athenian boy went to school from seven years 
of age till sixteen, being attended to his tutor's by a 
pedagogue, which meant in Greece a trusty elderly slave, 
who exercised an outdoor supervision, and had nothing 
to do with his teaching. The schoolmaster was called 
grammatistes, or teacher of grammata, or learning, in the 
sense of literature. Grammar (in his own tongue, the 
only one thought worthy of a Greek's study), arithmetic, 
and writing were the rudiments; then came the learning 
by heart of passages from the poets, chiefly Homer, 
selected with regard to the moral lessons to be derived 
from them. The higher education was known as mousike 
(i. e., art over which the Muses presided), and included the 
literary studies as well as what we call music. The lyre 
was the favorite instrument, and all the great lyric poems 
being set to music, there was abundant choice for practice. 
Gymnastics or athletic exercises formed the third and an 
important branch of youthful training, practiced between 
the ages of sixteen and eighteen; this training included 
running, wrestling, boxing, and military exercises. Thus 
was the Athenian lad prepared to play his part in man¬ 
hood as a citizen and a soldier. 

The great defect of Greek civilization, according to 
the modern notions arising from Christianity, was the 


HISTORY OF GREECE 175 

inferior estimation and treatment awarded to women. 
There were few Greeks who considered that women 
possessed any mental power, and the great philosopher 
Aristotle himself discusses the question as to whether a 
woman can have any virtues—such as courage, justice and 
temperance. The Greeks, by this neglect of mankind’s 
better half, were left destitute of the ennobling influence 
which womankind, properly trained and duly valued, has 
always been found to exercise on the physically stronger 
and technically ruling part of the race. 


HISTORY OF ROME 


The greatness of Roman history lies in the fact that 
it is, in a large sense, the history of the world from the 
time of Rome’s supremacy down to the present day. Out 
of the Roman Empire arose the modern state system of 
Europe, and the Roman language, law, and institutions 
are still, in changed forms, alive and active in the modern 
world. The influence of Palestine on our religion and of 
Greece on our art and literature, have to a great extent 
been wrought on us through Rome, which preserved and 
transmitted those great elements of our civilization. In 
Rome, as she established her power, all ancient history is 
lost; and out of Rome all modern history comes. In the 
history of Rome we see how the power of a single small 
town grew into that of a moderate-sized territory, from 
that into a country, from a country into a world. It was 
the mission of Rome in history thus to bring all the civ¬ 
ilized peoples of the West, including Western Asia, under 
one dominion and one bondage; and, this being a political 
condition which could only end in conquest from without, 
the culture which she had gathered up into one vast reser * 
voir was given off in streams that, in due season, fertilized 
the mental soil of rude and restless nations who stepped 
into Rome’s place. 

Rome’s early history, though of much later date than 

the early history of Greece, is involved in great obscurity. 

The burning of Rome by the Gauls in B. C. 390 destroyed 

almost all the national records, and for our knowledge of 

the earlier times we are dependent on historians to whom 

the science of historical criticism was unknown, and who 

176 


HISTORY OF ROME 


T 77 


derived their information from legends embodied in lays, 
and from other untrustworthy sources. The earliest 
Roman historian, Fabius Pictor, lived during the second 
Punic War, some 500 years after the reputed foundation of 
Rome. Little reliance can be placed on the details of 
Roman history for the first 400 years and more. For 
about 300 years before the Christian era there are few 
authentic details, and beyond these, contradictions between 
which there is no means of deciding. 

Italy is the second—from east to west or west to east 
—of the three great peninsulas of Southern Europe. The 
coast is not greatly indented, nor surrounded by numer¬ 
ous islands, like that of Greece. One long chain of moun¬ 
tains runs like a backbone through all the country except 
the wide northern plain, the valley of the Po, called by the 
Romans Padus. That plain was reckoned by the 
Romans, until the Christian era, as not being Italian at 
all, but Gallic, and was called by them Gallia Cisalpina, 
or “Gaul on-this-side-the-Alps.” The mention of Gaul 
brings us to the olden races. The Gauls, as part of the 
great Celtic race, were Aryans. South of the Gauls came 
a people of uncertain origin named the Etruscans, to the 
west of the Apennines. The occupation of the south of 
Italy by Greek colonies in historical times has been related 
in the history of Greece. The Greeks found there and in 
part civilized and absorbed a people also of uncertain 
origin (perhaps Pelasgians) called the Iapygians. The 
main part of the rest of the peninsula, the center, was occu¬ 
pied by the great Italian race, of Aryan stock, and of near 
kindred, as the language proves, to the Greeks. Of this 
race there were two great branches—the Latins and the 
Umbro-Sabellians, also called Oscans. The Oscans or 
Umbro-Sabellians included the Umbrians, Sabines, Sarri- 

nites, HLquians, Volscians, Lucanians, and other tribes 
Voi,. 1 —12 


178 ANCIENT AND MEDIAEVAL HISTORY 


among and to west of the Apennines. Sicily was inhabited 
in the west by a race of unknown origin called the Sikan- 
ians: the Sikels, who gave their name to the island, were 
nearly connected in race with the Latins. Sicily was 
fought for by the Carthaginians and the Greek cities 
founded in Sicily: in the end the island became almost 
wholly Greek in speech and usages. 

Before relating the origin, so far as it is known, of 
the early Romans, we will deal with that mysterious peo¬ 
ple, the Etruscans, who are interesting both in themselves 
and from the part they seem to have played in the rise and 
early history of Rome. The Etruscans (called by the 
Greeks Tyrrheni or Tyrseni, and by themselves Rasena) 
were a people of uncertain, probably mixed, origin, and 
became a very powerful nation before Rome existed. In 
that early time they had extended their dominion as far as 
the Alps northward, and Mount Vesuvius southward. In 
the early Roman times their northern and southern con¬ 
quests had been lost, and they were confined to the limits 
of the Etruria of the map, forming a confederacy of 
twelve independent oligarchical republics, in separate 
cities, of which the chief were named Volaterrse, Volsinii, 
Clusium, Arretium, Cortona, Falerri, and Veii. In lan¬ 
guage, manners, and customs they were quite distinct from 
the Greek and Italian races, and their religion was of a 
gloomy kind, involving much mysterious worship of 
infernal deities. Their system of divination became in 
many points that of the Romans. The civilization of the 
Etruscans was well developed, and included some skill in 
statuary, painting, and architecture, and a knowledge of 
the use of the arch. Many of the religions and political 
institutions of Rome were of Etruscan origin. They 
were good at shipbuilding, had a powerful navy in early 
times, and carried on much commerce with the Greeks. 


HISTORY OF ROME 


179 


They were great workers in metal, and famous for mir¬ 
rors, candelabra, and other works in bronze, as well as 
for necklaces and other ornaments in gold. The so-called 
“Etruscan vases,” however, are now known to be produc¬ 
tions of Greek art. 

The Sabines, in a mountainous district of central Italy, 
were always noted as a people of virtuous and simple 
habits, deepl\ religious, faithful to their word, strong lov ‘ 
ers of freedom, and brave in its defence. 

The and ent Latins, before the existence of Rome, had 
founded or the west coast of central Italy, south of the 
Tiber, a confederation or league of thirty towns, of which 
the town called Alba Longa became the head. 

(Jut of these three nations or tribes—the Latins, 
Sabines, and Etruscans—the Roman people were origi¬ 
nally formed. The principal element was Latin, as the 
language shows. The next in importance was the Sabine, 
and the third, in order both of time and of influence, was 
the Etruscan. 

The nominal date of the foundation of Rome is B. C. 
753, about which time the Latin town named Alba Longa 
seems to have established a settlement on the left (south) 
bank of the river Tiber, about fifteen miles from the sea. 
The name Roma means probably a march or border, and 
this Latin settlement would be made as an outpost to 
guard their march or frontier against the Etruscans on the 
right (north) side of the Tiber. This Latin town is 
stated to have been built on a height called the Palatine 
Hill, and we are to> conceive it as a collection of huts 
inhabited mainly by husbandmen and shepherds. A 
union was soon made, it seems likely, with the people of a 
Sabine town called Quirium or Curium, existing on a 
neighboring hill, called the Quirinal. At an early date, 
perhaps as a result of warfare partially successful for the 


180 ANCIENT AND MEDIEVAL HISTORY 


Etruscans, the third, the Etruscan, element was admitted, 
and the result was Rome. As Freeman, in his “General 
Sketch of European History/’ says: “This account sets 
forth the way in which Rome became the greatest of all 
cities, namely, by constantly granting her citizenship both 
to her allies and to her conquered (in the case of the 
Etruscans we must perhaps read ‘conquering’) enemies. 
Step by step the people of Latium, of Italy, and of the 
whole civilized world, all became Romans. This is what 
really distinguishes the Roman history from all other his¬ 
tory, and is what made the power of Rome so great and 
lasting.” 

The sole fact represented by the legends of the “Seven 
Kings” of Rome is that government began there, as in the 
early times of Greece, with monarchy, but elective mon¬ 
archy, not hereditary, as in Greece and in modern times. 
The King was chosen by an assembly of the chief men, 
and there was a senate who assisted him to rule. It was 
probably toward the end of the monarchial period that the 
Etruscans came into a share of power, and it was owing 
to the misrule of a King of Etruscan family, it appears, 
that monarchy at Rome came to an end by his expulsion 
through a popular hatred so determined that the Romans 
never afterward could bear even the name of “King,” and 
a republic or commonwealth was established. The date of 
this may be taken as about B. C. 500, in default of all cer¬ 
tainty. 

The genius of the Roman people seems to have been 
shown at a very early period of their history by the organ¬ 
ization of the citizens on a military basis, according to 
which the state was treated, in the person of its grown-up 
males, as an army, and every man was liable to serve in 
war. As the city grew in numbers by the immigration of 
strangers, and the admission of allies or incorporation of 


HISTORY OF ROME 


1S1 


subjects, two principal classes of the citizens became 
developed—the famous Patricians and Plebeians. The 
Patricians were probably those descended from the 
original citizens of the united Latin, Sabine, and Etruscan 
town, and the Plebeians the descendants of those after¬ 
ward admitted. The internal history of Rome for several 
hundred years consists mainly of the account of struggles 
between these two orders—the Patricians and Plebeians. 
The Patricians alone were at first admissible to the great 
governing body called the Senate, and they kept in their 
hands all the high offices of state, the higher degrees of 
the priesthood, and the ownership of the public lands. The 
two orders were not allowed to intermarry, and the Plebe¬ 
ians, though they were free and personally independent 
(with the important exception of compulsory service in 
war), had no political weight. This was the early state 
of things in the Roman civil world, and the Plebeians, as 
might be expected, soon began to strive after a share in the 
rights exclusively belonging to the Patricians. 

In Roman civil history we find three different legisla¬ 
tive assemblies, all called Comitia, meaning “comings- 
together,”—the Comitia Curiata, Comitia Centuriata, and 
Comitia Tributa. Of these the Comitia Curiata was the 
earliest, and was a solely patrician assembly, which elected 
the King, made the laws, and decided in all cases affecting 
the life of a citizen. The powers of this assembly were 
soon transferred to the Comitia Centuriata, and it became 
a mere form long before the end of the republic. The 
Comitia Centuriata was the second in order of time, and 
came into existence under the monarchy. In this assem¬ 
bly the Patricians and Plebeians voted together, according 
to a distribution of power based upon wealth, ascertained 
by a census, or register of citizens and their property. 
The institution was a means of admitting a democratic 


18a ANCIENT AND MEDIAEVAL HISTORY 


element, while a decided aristocratic preponderance was 
secured. The Comitia Centuriata was for a time the sov¬ 
ereign assembly of the nation, and received the power of 
electing the King, and then (under the republic) the 
higher state officials, of repealing and enacting laws, and of 
deciding in cases of appeal from a judicial sentence. As 
time went on these powers remained, with the right of 
declaring war and making peace, and with the exercise of 
the highest judicial functions, as in accusations of treason, 
and in all appeals from Roman citizens on criminal mat¬ 
ters. The influence of the Comitia Centuriata in the state 
was, however, gradually superseded by that of the third, 
the great popular assembly, the Comitia Tributa. The 
Comitia Tributa—originally based upon a division of the 
whole people into local tribes—in time became a solely 
plebian assembly, voting according to tribes, not man by 
man. In the course of time the powers of this body be¬ 
came very great, so that it could check all legislation initi¬ 
ated by the senate in the aristocratic Comitia Centuriata, 
and stop the whole machinery of the constitution. 

The most famous part of the Roman constitution—the 
body which nas given its name as a generic term to similar 
powerful assemblies—was the Senate, or Council of 
Elders. Founded in the monarchial times, it consisted at 
first of 300, and then of 600 members, and became the 
great executive body of the Roman Republic. The mem¬ 
bers of the Senate were those citizens alone who had held 
at least one of the five highest offices of the state—the 
Quaestorship, Hidileship, Prsetorship, Censorship, or Con- 
sulsnip. The dignity was held for life, unless expulsion 
were inflicted by the Censors, who filled up all vacancies in 
the body every five years from among the past holders of 
the above five offices. As the people, either in the Comitia 
Tributa or Centuriata ultimately elected the holders of the 


HISTORY OF ROME 1S3 

above high offices, it is clear that none could be senators 
who had not both had some experience in public affairs, and 
enjoyed public confidence. The practical genius of the 
Roman people is strikingly shown in such an arrangement, 
theoretically as near perfection as possible for the securing 
of fit men to administer the government. The powers of 
this august body were extensive. The Senate controlled 
legislation by its approval being required for the proposal 
of a law to the two popular assemblies, while its own 
decrees, called Senatus-consulta, were valid at once in mat¬ 
ters affecting home administration, provincial government, 
foreign policy, and religion. In foreign affairs the Sen¬ 
ate had absolute control, except for declaring war and con¬ 
cluding peace, which were subject to the vote of the 
Comitia Centuriata. When Rome acquired foreign 
dominion this great body appointed the provincial gover¬ 
nors; in war it exercised control over the conduct of 
operations, and the appointment and dismissal of generals; 
in foreign policy the senators alone negotiated, and 
appointed envoys from their own body. The administra¬ 
tion of the finances and all matters of religion were 
entirely in their hands. Finally, the Senate could suspend 
the constitution altogether by investing, at its discretion, 
a consul with absolute power (the famous Dictatorship) 
in case of imminent danger to the safety of the republic at 
home or abroad. 

On the abolition of monarchy (supposed to have 
occurred about B. C. 500) the royal power was intrusted 
to two high officials, elected for one year of office, and 
called, ultimately, consuls. They were the highest execu¬ 
tive officers of the state, both in civil and military affairs. 
They convoked the Senate, presided over its deliberations, 
and executed both its decrees and those of the popular 
assembly. They commanded the armies with the full 


i8 4 ancient and mediaeval history 


powers of martial law, and on the expiration of their year 
of office were appointed (as proconsuls) on occasion, to 
chief provincial governorships. The office was held in 
the highest esteem as representing the majesty of the 
Roman state, and, in monthly turns, each consul was 
attended abroad by twelve officials called lictors, who 
marched in front of him, each bearing fasces. These 
fasces consisted of a bundle of rods encircling an axe, and 
were symbols of the supreme power, extending in theory 
to corporal punishment and death. When the lictors 
appeared in the streets of Rome the axe was removed, as a 
sign that no' magistrate could inflict death on a Roman 
citizen within the walls. 

The censors were also two in number, and their office 
was, technically, the highest in the state. They were 
elected every five years, were generally ex-consuls, and 
wielded very great powers. The censors had a general 
and arbitrary control over the moral conduct of all citi¬ 
zens, and could inflict political degradation by the expul¬ 
sion of senators from the Senate, of knights (equites) from 
their order, and of an ordinary citizen from his tribe, 
thereby depriving him of his franchise. They also, under 
the Senate, administered the public finances, farming out 
the collection of the taxes by auction to those called publi- 
cani, and expending the revenue on public buildings, roads, 
aqueducts, and other important works. The censors, 
lastly, made the census, or register of the value of the prop¬ 
erty of every Roman citizen, which affected certain politi¬ 
cal rights, and was the basis for the assessment of the 
property-tax. 

The praetors were officials who had important func¬ 
tions to perform. Originally there was only one 
(appointed first in B. C. 366), while subsequently 
another was appointed. The former, called praetor 



C. MACCARI, PiNX 


BLIND APPIUS CLAUDIUS LED INTO THE SENATE 




















* 


















HISTORY OF ROME 


*5 

urbanus, acted as a judge in causes between Roman citi¬ 
zens; the other (praetor peregrinus, added B. C. 246), 
was judge in cases in which foreigners were engaged. As 
the foreign dominion of Rome grew, four other praetors 
were appointed, who acted as governors in Sicily, Sardinia, 
and the two provinces of Spain, and latterly the number 
vas still further increased. 

The curule aediles, first appointed B. C. 365, had the 
care of the public buildings, the city drainage, and all 
matters of police. They also took charge of the celebra¬ 
tion of the great public festivals, and at a later period this 
office became confined to wealthy citizens, as the games had 
to be held at the private cost of the aediles. The curule 
aedileship, in the corrupt age of the republic, thus became 
a means of bribing the people for election to further high 
offices, by the exhibition of the costly spectacles in which 
the citizens took delight. 

The quaestors were the paymasters of the republic. 
They discharged, out of the revenues intrusted to them, the 
expenses of the civil and military services; their number 
being originally two for service at Rome, and increased, 
as foreign dominion extended, and the provincial gover¬ 
nors each required such an official to assist him. The 
first four of these high offices of state were called the 
curule magistracies, because the holders had the right of 
sitting upon a state-chair of peculiar form, called the sella 
curulis, originally an Etruscan sign of royalty. 

Rome solved the problem which Athenian statesmen 
and philosophers failed to solve—how to found an Empire. 
In studying Roman history we are watching a progress 
which, in its vast proportions, is quite unique in the annals 
of the world, the progress of a municipality into a King¬ 
dom and an Empire, the march of an army to universal 
conquest and dominion. Rome gradually advanced from 


186 ANCIENT AND MEDIAEVAL HISTORY 


her position as a rustic fortress on the Palatine Hill to 
that of an agricultural and commercial community, of an 
emporium of trade, and of a military town with a regularly 
fortified wall and a military organization of her citizens. 
Slowly but surely her internal political unity is cemented 
by the wisdom of timely concession, though for nearly two 
centuries the military strength of the young republic was 
so far crippled by the incessant party-conflicts within her 
walls that she failed to overpower the neighboring towns 
and tribes whose inroads still infested her borders. 

The year B. C. 366 brings a crisis in her internal his¬ 
tory, when the election of the first plebeian consul and the 
dedication of a temple to Concord announced the fusion 
of the two rival orders—a fusion whose further progress 
is traced in the enactments of the Publilian, Ogulnian, 
Valerian, and Hortensian laws, which did away with the 
remaining monopolies of the Patricians. By the time 
these measures were passed Rome had already become 
lord of Latium. In what was called the “Jus Latii” (or 
“franchise of Latium”)—the species of Roman citizen¬ 
ship to which the conquered Latin population were gen¬ 
erally admitted—we may see the secret of Roman domin¬ 
ion, the power of political assimilation and incorporation. 
The policy of Rome was in this respect always the same. 
One by one successively, the Sabines (in the earliest days), 
the Plebeians, the Latins, the Italians, or inhabitants of 
Italy at large, and latterly the Provincials, were taken up 
and incorporated with her political life, and the heart of 
the Imperial city was constantly being nourished with the 
best blood of the conquerer nations. There is nothing fit¬ 
ful, nothing hesitating, nothing volcanic in the majestic 
sweep—checked by defeat, but never broken—of the on¬ 
ward march of Rome. In this course of expansion for 
her Empire Rome had no ideas of the balance of power 


HISTORY OF ROME 


187 

or of deliberate aggrandizement. She aspired at first sim¬ 
ply to be strong, and with that view her enemies were to be 
made weak. War was from the outset the very condition 
of her existence. Mars was the national god; the national 
virtues were the virtues of a soldier; and the greatest of 
the Caesars could find no more humiliating rebuke to 
address to his mutineers than to call them simply “citizens” 
(Quirites), the name given to Romans in their civil 
capacity. 

Rome’s mastery of Latium was followed by her con¬ 
quest of the Etruscans and the Samnites, which secured 
for her the command of Northern and Central Italy; then 
by the defeat of Pyrrhus at Beneventum, which gave Rome 
Southern Italy; then by Hannibal’s discomfiture at Zama, 
which ended the power of her rival Carthage; then by the 
victory of Pydna in B. C. 168, which left Rome, at the 
close of her Macedonian wars, supreme over the Mediter¬ 
ranean world. These were the glorious days of the repub¬ 
lic, days when democracy was established by law, while 
aristocracy was still dear to sentiment. 

At this stage the picture of Rome’s greatness has 
another and a darker side. We can see the evil influence 
of Roman conquest upon Roman morality; we can trace 
the decline of the old simplicity of life and habits by the 
influx of debased Greek manners, and the corrosive action 
of that vast tide of wealth which flowed in upon the vic¬ 
tors when the commerce of Carthage and of her dependen¬ 
cies was diverted into Roman ports. Religious reverence 
and domestic purity decayed; divorce became exceedingly 
common, and the scandalous and licentious Bacchanalian 
mysteries were introduced. 

Meantime, between the ages of Pyrrhus and of Han¬ 
nibal, the agricultural system of the peninsula underwent 
a gradual change, and one pregnant with most important 


188 ANCIENT AND MEDIEVAL HISTORY 


consequences. The small freeholds formerly held by an 
independent peasantry passed into large estates which 
were tended by slave-labor and superintended by hired 
bailiffs, themselves very often slaves. A great propor¬ 
tion of the soil became mere pasture ground, and the 
increasing population of the idle capital was made 
dependent on the corn-ships from the fertile Sicily and 
Africa for its daily food. Thus, neglecting to enforce her 
agrarian laws, which would have kept land subdivided, 
and not being a commercial state, Rome possessed no 
middle class of citizens, without which there can be no 
permanent liberty; political power came to be placed more 
and more at the disposal of the lower order of the people, 
and the genuine Roman character was debased by the con¬ 
stant influx and manumission of slaves. 

Latterly the government of provinces, the conduct of 
wars, with their opportunities for plunder, and the farm¬ 
ing of the public revenues, with their openings for extor¬ 
tion, enabled many of the nobility and the knights to 
acquire immense wealth, with which they purchased from 
corrupt judges impunity for their crimes, and bought from 
a thoroughly venal populace the lucrative and influential 
offices of the state, which their votes threw open to success¬ 
ful candidates. Patriotism gave place to ambition, and 
the unselfish loyalty that thought only of the Republic was 
succeeded by the spirit of party rivalry, by the lust for 
wealth, and by the craving for personal aggrandizement. 
It is no longer a contest between the Patricians and the 
Plebeians, for that distinction has long since been effaced. 
It is a war between the rich and the poor: the nobles harden 
into an unfeeling oligarchy, while the people degenerate 
into a mob; the machinery of government suited for a sin¬ 
gle city cannot be made to serve the purpose of a world¬ 
wide dominion, and the time fast approaches when the cry 


HISTORY OF ROME 


189 

of the commonwealth against the lacerations of civil war, 
and the cry of the oppressed and plundered provinces 
against the extortions of their oppressive governors are 
to be answered by the substitution of one master for many, 
and by the establishment of that monarchy toward which 
events had long and steadily been pointing, in place of the 
Republic which now existed but in memory and in name. 

After the triumphs of Pompey in the East, and the 
conquest of Gaul by Caesar in the West, we have the 
collision of the rival conquerors, the thunders of the civil 
wars, and the consolidation at last of every office and of 
all power in the state in the hands of Augustus. Then 
come the enervating influence of Imperialism; the grow¬ 
ing servility of the Senate; the death of political activity; 
the pauperization and dwindling of the people; the demor¬ 
alizing influence of slavery, of the arena, the circus, and the 
theater; the rival systems of the Stoic and the Epicurean 
philosophy, Neo-Platonism, and Christianity; the pomp¬ 
ous inanities of expiring superstition; the gradual Orient- 
alization of the Empire. These are the main features in 
the picture of the culmination and the decline of an Empire 
around whose frontiers we at last hear the threatening 
tramp of the barbarian peoples who are assembling for 
their part in the mighty drama of the death of the Old 
World and the birth of the New. True it is that Roman 
history is the history of the world, for into Rome the 
ancient order dies, and out of her the modern order is 
born. She persecuted Christianity, but she made Chris¬ 
tendom possible by giving it organization and form. Mod¬ 
ern liberty was gradually developed upon the basis of the 
municipal institutions of the queen of cities, and her lan¬ 
guage and her laws were inextricably interwoven into the 
progressive fabric of the modern world. 

The essential feature of Rome’s history is the exten- 


i 9 o ANCIENT AND MEDIAEVAL HISTORY 

sion of her power by war, for the carrying out of what 
was doubtless the unconscious purpose of her existence—• 
the linking the nations together, and preparing the way 
for a Heaven-sent faith. We have seen in the panoramic 
sketch just given what were the achievements of Rome 
in war, and we are led to inquire to what special causes 
results so remarkable, so unequaled, were due. They 
were due, firstly, to the special character that was inherent 
in the race, and, in a secondary way, to the special mili¬ 
tary organization which the genius of the people developed 
as the fit instrument for effecting the conquest of the 
world. The elements out of which the Roman people 
was formed were Latin, Sabine, and Etruscan, and these 
must have had a natural adaptation to produce the Roman 
spirit. 

Our ideas of Roman character are derived in some 
degree from the legends which appear in the earlier part 
of the Roman story, and which we have rejected from 
history. Those legends, however, were universally re¬ 
ceived as true by the Romans themselves, and therefore 
they are true to the genius of the times and of the people, 
true in the lessons of Roman character which they incul¬ 
cate, true for the practical purpose of teaching us what 
manner of men those old Romans really were. Legend¬ 
ary lore possesses, in fact, a formative power in moulding 
the national character by consecrating traditional types of 
men for the admiration and imitation of posterity. The 
Roman thought of early Rome and of her heroes as his 
poets and orators had taught him to think, and so from 
the legends we can understand in a measure the thoughts 
and actions of those who implicitly believed them. In 
Rome, as opposed to the poetry and freedom of spirit 
among the Greeks, we have stern, constrained, unfeeling, 
prosaic intelligence. The character of the people is 


HISTORY OF ROME 


191 

shown in their religion. The word “religion” means obli¬ 
gation, a binding power, and the religion of the Romans 
was a feeling of constraint, and their worship a business¬ 
like performance involving narrow aspirations, expedi¬ 
ency, and profit. They worshiped prosaic abstractions 
such as Pax, “peace,” Tranquillitas, “quietness.” They 
had altars to Plague, Hunger, Mildew (Robigo), Fever. 
They not only prayed to their gods in time of need, but 
made solemn vows to them in times of difficulty, and they 
imported foreign divinities and rites to help them when 
their home deities appeared to be inefficient. The Roman 
temples were chiefly built in consequence of vows, and thus 
arose from necessity and not spontaneously: such a devo¬ 
tion as this was a thoroughly hard, practical, and interested 
worship. Still the Roman religion was, in one view, 
high, earnest, and severe, and this resulted in government, 
as its highest earthly expression. 

Duty was the Roman watchword, and therefore law 
on earth, as a copy of the will of Heaven. The destiny 
of the Roman seems to have been to stamp on the mind of 
mankind the ideas of law, government, order. He 
showed his practical character by what he left behind him 
—works of public usefulness—noble roads intersecting 
Empires—huge aqueducts—bridges—excavations for 
draining cities—and especially that great system of law, 
the slow growth of ages of experience, which has con¬ 
tributed so largely to the jurisprudence of most European 
nations. The great Roman poet, Virgil, knew what the 
Roman’s work in life was when he sang, contrasting his 
countrymen with the Greeks— 

“Others, belike, with happier grace 
From bronze or stone shall call the face, 

Plead doubtful causes, map the skies, 

And tell when planets set or rise; 

But, Roman, thou—do thou control 


19 2 ANCIENT AND MEDIAEVAL HISTORY 

The nations far and wide; 

Be this thy genius, to impose 
The rule of Peace on vanished foes, 

Show pity to the humbled soul, 

And crush the sons of pride.” 

The domestic ties were held sacred by the Romans. 
Home was sacred, guarded by the deities of the domestic 
shrine—the Lares and Penates. A Roman’s own fireside 
was nearly the most sacred spot on earth. The battle-cry 
was “Pro aris et focis,” “for our altars and hearths.” 
The fabric of the commonwealth arose out of the family. 
First the family—then the clan (gens) made up of the 
family and its dependents (clientes)—then the tribe—last 
the nation. Thus the Roman state rested on the founda¬ 
tion of the family hearth. Domestic corruption in Rome, 
the loss of integrity and manliness in her Senate, preceded 
and led to her ruin. The Roman virtue, when Rome flour¬ 
ished, was manly courage (virtus), manhood. Roman 
courage was no mere animal daring, but duty, obedience 
to will, self-surrender to the public good—the courage of 
the Spartan at his best amongst the Greeks. The Roman 
legions subdued the world not by discipline alone, nor by 
strength, nor audacity, but by moral force, contempt of 
pain, preference of death to dishonor. Unconquerable 
fidelity to duty was the spell which laid the forces of the 
world prostrate before her: in that strength she went forth 
conquering and to conquer. The chief virtues of the old 
Romans were these—fortitude, temperance, spirit to resist 
oppression, respect for legitimate authority, ardent patri¬ 
otism. Of charity and chivalrous generosity—virtues 
mainly of Christian production and growth—they were 
generally destitute. They were cruel, hard, and grasp¬ 
ing, and often faithless in their dealings with other nations. 
Among all the qualities which contributed to make Rome 
supremely great amongst the nations—the one all-con- 



HISTORY OF ROME 


*93 


quering people of the ancient world—the chief was the 
habit of obedience, of reverence for authority, which was 
ingrained in the Roman’s nature. 

Such was the character of the ancient Roman—a 
character in all its chief features essentially military. To 
this character accordingly must be mainly attributed the 
extraordinary success of the Romans in extending their 
conquests over the world, and in uniting so many different 
nationalities in one Empire. But as another and almost 
equally important factor in this result we must regard their 
military organizations. The constitution of the Roman 
legion—the great military instrument of Roman conquest 
—varied at different epochs of history, and underwent 
successive improvements from men of tactical ability. The 
main principle of its formation, however, was the same 
throughout. In the later days of the Republic, when per¬ 
fected by the great commander Marius, the legion was, 
in numbers, a brigade; but in form it was a complete small 
army corps of over 6,000 men, including troops of all arms, 
cavalry, infantry, and artillery, or the military engines for 
siege purposes. The cavalry were 300 in number. The 
infantry, numbering about 6,000, were composed partly of 
skirmishers, armed with slings or bows and arrows, or 
light darts, but mainly of armor-clad men using the pilum, 
an iron-pointed spear (six feet long, and weighing over 
ten pounds) for hurling at the enemy from a distance of 
ten to fifteen paces, and (for close quarters) a short, stout, 
two-edged, pointed, cut-and-thrust sword. The execu¬ 
tion done with these weapons by powerful men was ter¬ 
rible, the hurled pilum producing great slaughter and con¬ 
fusion, amidst which the legionaries closed in upon the 
shaken foe with the short sword, and concluded matters by 
downright strokes upon the head, or, if that were strongly 

guarded, by stabs delivered upward below the enemy’s 
Voi,. 1 —13 


i94 ANCIENT AND MEDIAEVAL HISTORY 

shield. The infantry of the legion was divided into ten 
cohorts, each of 600 men, and, in battle array, stood in two 
lines (01, in Julius Caesar’s arrangement, in three lines), 
each line consisting of five cohorts with a space between 
each. The van, or front line, was composed of the veter¬ 
ans, with the younger soldiers in the rear line, as a reserve. 
The excellence of the legion’s formation consisted in its 
having both a close array and an organization allowing 
of division into parts; it combined in itself at once massive¬ 
ness and capability of dispersion. It was firm and com¬ 
pact at will, and yet could readily expand when it became 
necessary. 

In the best days of Rome every citizen between the 
ages of seventeen and fifty was liable to military service, 
unless he was of the lowest class, or had served twenty 
years in the infantry or ten in the cavalry. The drill was 
severe, and included running, jumping, swimming in full 
armor, and marching long distances at a rapid pace. For 
sieges the Romans used military-engines of Greek inven¬ 
tion, such as the ballista for hurling huge stones; the cata¬ 
pult for ponderous beam-like spears; the battering-ram for 
breaching walls, and the movable tower for pushing close 
to the enemy’s defences so as to overlook them. The 
Roman entrenched camp was a great feature of the war¬ 
fare, being admirable for security, with its ditch and solid 
rampart of earth crowned by a stout wooden palisade. 
Inside the camp the tents of all the soldiers and officers 
were ranged in regular order upon a plan common to all 
the Roman armies. 

A triumph, the grand reward of a successful general’s 
achievements, was regarded as the height of military 
glory, and was the chief object of ambition to every Roman 
commander. The honor was granted by the Senate, and 
only to one who, as praetor, consul, or dictator, had gained 


195 


HISTORY OF ROME 

\ 

brilliant and decisive victories, or had by a series of opera¬ 
tions permanently and largely added to the foreign terri¬ 
tory of Rome. On the conclusion of the war the general 
and his army returned to Rome, and if a triumph were 
granted, money was voted by the Senate to defray the 
expenses, and a special decree of the people assembled in 
Comitia Tributa suspended the constitution for the one 
or more days of the triumph so as to enable the successful 
general to enter the city in his military^ capacity and with 
an armed force. Thus jealously were a Roman’s civil 
rights guarded against the military authority conferred by 
the popular assembly. This authority was called the 
imperium, and could be held, except by special enactment, 
only outside the city walls. 

A fine poetical description of a triumph is given in Lord 
Macaulay’s Lays of Ancient Rome (Prophecy of Capys). 
The grand procession entered the city, headed by lictors, 
clearing the way for the Senate and high officials, who 
came first. Then followed players upon the pipe and flute, 
succeeded by the spoils of war—treasures of art, rich plate 
and pictures, statues and robes of price. All these were 
borne by bay-crowned soldiers on stands or heads of lances, 
mingled with products of the conquered country’s soil, 
and with arms and standards taken from the foe. Then 
came long files of prisoners of war, with vanquished lead¬ 
ers, and it may be a captive King. White oxen with 
gilded horns were led along accompanied by the priests 
who were to slay them; and last, preceded by a throng of 
singers and musicians, came the victorious general stand¬ 
ing erect in four-horse car, his body clad in white embroid¬ 
ered robe, an ivory eagle-tipped scepter in his hand, and 
the triumphal wreath of gold held by a slave above his 
head. Last came the conqueror’s army, and the long 
pomp marched down the street called ‘'Sacred Way,” then 


*9 6 ANCIENT AND MEDIAEVAL HISTORY 


through the Forum (the chief square or Place, in conti¬ 
nental phrase, of ancient Rome), and up the Capitoline 
Hill to the temple of “Jupiter of the Capitol,” Jupiter 
Capitolinus, the chief god of Rome. There the triumphal 
general laid his golden crown on the lap of the god’s 
statue as an offering of thanksgiving, and the day ended 
with feasting, revelry, and song. The Roman character 
was darkly shown in the usual treatment of conquered 
foes; the rank and file endured the lot of slaves; the cap¬ 
tured general or King passed from the triumphal proces¬ 
sion to imprisonment or death. Jugurtha, King of Numi- 
dia, was deliberately starved in prison. Vercingetorix 
the ablest and bravest of the Gallic chiefs, was murdered 
after the triumph of B. C. 45 by order of his conqueror, 
Julius Caesar, famed, and that justly, as, toward his fel¬ 
low-citizens, one of the most generous of Romans. 


EVOLUTION OF THE ROMAN CONSTITUTION 


When Rome ceased to be under monarchial rule, two 
high officials called consuls were appointed, to hold a 
yearly office, and wield the chief executive power in the 
state. About B. C. 500 began struggles between the 
Patricians and Plebeians, arising out of the discontent 
caused by poverty and distress among the inferior class. 
The Plebeians fought the battles of Rome, and, in order 
to do so,had to neglect the tillage of the soil by which they 
lived. Hence came poverty, made worse still by a severe 
law of debt, and by a high rate of interest extorted by the 
Patricians who advanced money. The taxation of the 
state was paid solely by the Plebeians, as the Patricians 
had ceased to pay their rent to the treasury for the public 
lands which they held. At the same time, the Plebeians, 
which body, we must remember, included also many men 
of birth and wealth, were entirely excluded from public 
offices, and such a state of things could only end in an out¬ 
break. According to the traditions on which we have to 
rely for this part of Roman history, such an event occur¬ 
red in B. C. 493. 

The oppression exercised upon the debtors, who were 
imprisoned and flogged on failure to pay, caused a with¬ 
drawal, a secession, of the Plebeians in a body to a hill 
called Mons Sacer (“Holy Hill”) outside the Roman ter¬ 
ritory, and about thtfee miles from Rome. Their declared 
purpose was to erect a new town, and dwell apart with 
equal rights. The Patricians were left helpless against 
foreign enemies, and as usual in such cases, made conces¬ 
sions when they were forced to terms. It was agreed 

197 


198 ANCIENT AND MEDIAEVAL HISTORY 

that two officials should be appointed (to balance the two 
consuls, who were Patrician magistrates) for the defence 
of the commoners against the cruel exercise of the law of 
debtor and creditor. These new magistrates were called 
Tribuni Plebis (“Tribunes of the Commons”), and the 
title, in the later development of the office, becomes very 
famous in aftertime. These Tribunes acted as cham¬ 
pions of the subordinate class against all oppression, and 
pleaded in the law courts on that behalf. The person of 
a Tribune was sacred and inviolable, and, in the exercise 
of his yearly office, he could forbid the execution of the 
order of any official, or of any decree of the Senate; he 
could pardon offences, and call to account all enemies of 
the commons under his charge. 

In B. C. 486 Spurius Cassius, tried for treason and put 
to death by the Patricians, is said to have carried the first 
of the famous Agrarian Laws, for limiting the amount of 
public land held by the Patricians, compelling them to pay 
tithe or rent for the land they held, and dividing surplus 
lands amongst the Plebeians. The law was not acted on, 
through the violence and injustice of the Patricians. The 
Plebeians exercised some check from time to time, by the 
refusal to serve as soldiers. In B. C. 473, however, 
the Tribune Genucius was murdered by the Patricians, 
because he had called the consuls to account for not carry¬ 
ing the Agrarian Law into effect. In B. C. 471 a great 
advance was made by the Plebeians. They succeeded in 
carrying the famous Publilian Law, proposed by the 
Tribune Publilius Volero, that the Tribunes should in 
future be chosen only at the Comitia Tributa, the popular 
assembly, instead of the Comitia Centuriata, an assembly 
under Patrician influence. The Comitia Tributa also re¬ 
ceived the right of deliberating and deciding upon all mat¬ 
ters that were open to discussion and settlement in the 


HISTORY OF ROME 


199 

Comitia Centuriata. After this the struggle continued, 
and the commons found it a great disadvantage that there 
was no written law to control the chief Patrician magis¬ 
trates, the consuls, in their dealings with the Plebeians. 

After violent opposition, and the increase of the num¬ 
ber of Tribunes to ten, it was carried by the Plebeians 
(about B. C. 452) that ten commissioners (the famous 
Decemviri) should draw up a code of laws which should 

t •» A I 

bind all classes of Romans alike. The ultimate result was 
the compilation, and engraving on thick sheets of brass, 
of the first and- only code of law in the Roman Republic 
—the Laws of the Twelve Tables. These laws appear to 
have made the Comitia Tributa into a really national 
assembly for legislative purposes, embodying Patricians 
and Plebeians alike, and having the election of the lower 
officials—sediles, quaestors, and tribunes. The Plebeians, 
however, were still kept out of a share in the lands which 
they conquered in war, and a time of trouble came in the 
usurpation and violence of the Decemviri. It is to this 
period that the well-known story of Virginia and Appius 
Claudius, told in Macaulay’s Lays, belongs. For some 
years no tribunes were elected, and the commons were 
subject to wanton tyranny. In B. C. 448, the Plebeians, 
for the second time, seceded to the Mons Sacer, and the 
Decemviri were obliged to give way. Tribunes were 
reappointed, and the new consuls were Valerius and Hora- 
tius. By them, in the Comitia Centuriata, the great Valer¬ 
ian and Horatian Laws were passed, which may be re¬ 
garded as a first great charter of Roman freedom. A 
great increase of the power of the Plebeians was hereby 
effected. The assembly of the tribes, Comitia Tributa, 
was now put on a level with the Comitia Centuriata, so 
that a Plebiscitum or decree of the people’s assembly, had 
henceforth the same force as one passed by the Comitia 


200 ANCIENT AND MEDIAEVAL HISTORY 


Centuriata, and became law for the whole nation. The 
struggle between the two orders, Patricians and Plebeians, 
continued. In B. C. 445 the Lex Canuleia, proposed by 
the tribune Canuleius, was passed, sanctioning intermar¬ 
riage (connubium) between Patricians and Plebeians. 

Foreseeing that the time would come when the Plebe¬ 
ians must be admitted to the high offices of the state, the 
Patricians divided the powers of the consulship, and in 
B. C. 444 caused the appointment of Military Tribunes 
with consular power (Tribuni Militares Consulari Potes- 
tate), officers who might be elected from either order, as 
commanders of the army, while the civil powers of the 
consuls were kept by the Patricians in their own hands. 
In B. C. 443 the office of the Censors was established, with 
the proviso that they should be appointed only from the 
Patricians, and only by their assembly, the Comitia 
Curiata. In this office the Patricians undoubtedly gained 
an accession of power; the duties of the Censors have been 
already explained. The power of the Plebeians grew b3 r 
degrees through the exertion of the prerogatives of the 
Tribunes, and about B. C. 400 the office of the Military 
Tribunes became open to the Plebeians, and four out of 
the six were chosen from that order. After the capture 
of Rome by the Gauls (B. C. 390) fresh troubles for the 
Plebeians arose. Their lands near Rome had been laid 
waste, cattle killed, and implements of agriculture 
destroyed. Heavy taxes were imposed to make up for the 
loss of public treasure carried off by the Gauls, and soon the 
old trouble of debt arose, and consequent oppression by the 
Patrician creditors. The distress of the Commons in¬ 
creased until a great remedy was found by two patriotic 
tribunes of the Plebeians, Caius, Licinius Stolo and 
Lucius Sextius, who are regarded as the civil founders of 
Rome’s greatness, and the authors of the great Roman 


HISTORY OF ROME 


20) 


Charter of equality and freedom. These able, active, and 
determined men, after a tremendous struggle, fought with 
constitutional arms alone—one in which the Romans 
showed that respect for law and authority which, in their 
best days, so honorably distinguished them—carried their 
point in the end. The victory was won through the use 
of the tribunitian power of stopping the whole machinery 
of government. Year after year, for ten successive years, 
Licinius and Sextius were chosen tribunes, and, while the 
Patricians (a common device afterward) gained over the 
eight other tribunes, and prevented the popular bills being 
put to vote in the Comitia, the two tribunes prevented 
the election of the Consular Tribunes (save in B. C. 371, 
for a war with the Latins), and other high officials, and 
would have no troops levied at all. 

At last, in B. C. 366, the famous Licinian Laws were 
carried. Their provisions were these: That the interest 
already paid the debtors should be deducted from the capi¬ 
tal of the debt, and the reduced remainder paid off in three 
equal annual installments; that no one should hold above 
500 jugera (about 280 English acres) of the public land, 
the surplus to be divided among the poorer Plebeians; that 
the military tribunate with consular power should be 
abolished, and the consulship restored, but one Consul, at 
least, henceforward should be a Plebeian. Sextius was 
himself elected in B. C. 366 as the first Plebeian Consul. 
The Plebeians thus acquired perfect equality with the 
Patricians in the great stronghold of the constitutional 
offices — the Consulship; and this change was of tne 
greatest advantage to the state, as the subsequent history 
shows that among the great men produced by Rome, both 
as commanders and as statesmen, the Plebeian houses 
could claim an equal share with the original Patrician 

nobility. 



202 ANCIENT AND MEDIAEVAL HISTORY 


The idea likely to arise from the modern contemptu¬ 
ous use of the word “plebeian,” that the Plebeians, as 
an order, were composed solely of the mob of Rome, con¬ 
trasted with the Patricians, as the nobles, must here be 
guarded against. The distinction of Plebeian and 
Patrician is here political, and the Plebeians included many 
wealthy and otherwise influential men, previously ex* 
eluded by their descent from certain political advantages, 
just as in England, until the Catholic Emancipation Act 
was passed in the earlier part of the present Century, a 
Roman Catholic, though of ducal rank and princely wealth, 
could take no share in the deliberations of the House of 
Lords. 

In B. C. 339 Publilius Philo, Dictator in that year, 
carried the Publilian Laws, which put the Plebeians on a 
thorough practical equality with the Patricians. By these 
it was enacted: That a Plebiscitum (decree of the Com- 
itia Tributa) should bind as law the whole people: this was 
a re-enactment of a provision of the Valerian and Hora- 
tian laws, which provision had either never been carried 
into effect, or had become obsolete. That the legislative 
power of the Comitia Curiata should be, practically, abol¬ 
ished : hitherto that assembly had possessed a right of veto 
on measures proposed in the other Comitia. That one 
of the Censors must henceforth be a Plebeian. In B. C. 
336 the Prsetorship was thrown open to the Plebeians. 
In B. C. 300 the Lex Ogulnia (carried by two of the 
Tribuni Plebis, the brothers Quintus and Cnaeus Ogul- 
nius) stormed for the Plebeians the stronghold of the 
state religion, by enacting that four of the eight pontiffs 
and five of the nine augurs should be taken from thati 
order. The pontiffs and augurs, we may here explain^ 
had charge of the religious ceremonies, and the augurs, 
who consulted the will of the gods by observation of the 


HISTORY OF ROME 


203 


flight of birds, and so forth, had much political influence, 
residing in their power of delaying the progress of meas¬ 
ures in the Comitia, by declaring that the day was unpro- 
pitious for its meeting, and then no assembly could be held. 
In the same year, B. C. 300, M. Valerius, as Consul, re¬ 
enacted the Lex Valeria (one of the Valerian and Ilora- 
tian Laws), De Provocatione (“On the right of appeal”), 
to the effect that every Roman citizen should have a right 
of appeal to the assembly of the Plebeians, against the sen¬ 
tence of the supreme magistrate. In B. C. 286 Lex Hor- 
tensia, carried by Quintus Hortensius, Dictator in that 
year, confirmed the rights of the Plebeians by solemnly 
re-enacting the late Publilian Law, that the Plebeians 
might bind the whole people by laws. The Senate was 
hereby deprived of its veto on the proceedings of the 
Comitia Tributa, and that assembly of the Commons be¬ 
came a supreme legislative power. 

This enactment followed the third and last secession 
of the Plebeians, which protest of the order took the form 
of a retirement to the Janiculan Hill of Rome. Hence¬ 
forth there is an end of all political distinction between 
Patricians and Plebeians, and so-called equality of rights 
for both orders existed. The Comitia Tributa became 
now, however, the absolute legislative body in the state, 
the only check on that assembly being the veto of the 
Tribuni Plebis, and this led afterward to great intrigues 
on the part of the Patricians, in order to gain over one or 
more of the ten tribunes, and cause the veto to be exercised. 

The general result of all this contest between 
Patricians and Plebeians was that the constitution of 
Rome had become a moderate democracy; for the Senate 
retained the power of taxation, and the chief judicial 
power, as the judges in the most important civil and crim¬ 
inal cases were taken from the Senatorial order. The 


304 ANCIENT AND MEDIAEVAL HISTORY 


Senate, however, held the general executive administra¬ 
tion. That great body contained the political intelligence , 
and practical statesmanship of the commonwealth, and in 
consistency and sagacity, in unanimity and patriotism, it 
was the foremost political combination of all times, an 
assembly of Kings, which knew how to combine despotic 
energy with republican self-devotedness. Such was the 
end of the legitimate and constitutional development of 
the Roman state in its civil capacity. 


THE CONQUEST OF ITALY 

With regard to Rome’s gain of territory during the 
monarchial period, there has been preserved by the his¬ 
torian Polybius a treaty concluded by Rome with Carthage 
in B. C. 508, which proves that Rome possessed at that 
time nearly the whole coast of Latium, from the mouth of 
the Tiber to the town of Anxur or Tarracina. This 
dominion was soon afterward lost, and it also appears from 
the legendary accounts that Rome at an uncertain date, 
perhaps about B. C. 500, was besieged and taken by the 
Etruscans, who made the Romans redeem their city and 
some territory around it to the south of the Tiber by an 
undertaking only to use iron for implements of agricul¬ 
ture, which, of course, implies the disarming of the people. 
The Etruscans, however, were soon afterward defeated 
by a united force of the Latins and the Greeks of Cumae, 
and driven back to their own territory north of the Tiber. 

Rome soon recovered from the check she had received, 
and, in the times of respite from civil struggles, was en¬ 
gaged in war more or less successful, accounts of which 
are more or less legendary, with the neighboring cities 
and peoples, including the .Equi, to the east, the Volsci, 
to the south, the city of Veii, north of the Tiber, in Etruria, 
and the Etruscans. What seems certain amidst a chaos 
of romance is that by about B. C. 400 the power of Etruria 
had greatly declined, and that the large, wealthy and 
powerful city of Veii had been taken by Rome and made 
her permanent possession. The Plebeians received lands 
in the Veientine territory, and further conquests in Etruria 
were made, including the city of Falerii. 

205 


206 ancient and mediaeval history 


The Senonian Gauls (Senones) were a powerful Celtic 
tribe between the Sequana (Seine), and the Ligeris 
(Loire). A part of this people about B. C. 400 crossed 
the Alps into Cisalpine Gaul, made settlements in Umbria, 
and penetrated into Etruria. The Romans sent orders to 
them to desist from the siege of Clusium, and the Gauls 
replied by marching on Rome. The result was a total 
defeat of the Roman army (in B. C. 390) on the “black 
day of Allia,” a little stream to the north of Rome. The 
day was marked ever afterward in the Roman calendar as 
a dies nefastus (unholy day), on which no business could 
be lawfully done, and no sacrifice offered to the gods. 
Rome was then taken by the Gauls and burnt, the capitol 
itself being either occupied or bought off by payment of 
ransom, and the Gauls then retired with a great booty. 
The result to Rome was disastrous for the moment, but the 
Gallic invasion seems to have done Rome’s work for her 
in one direction by completely crushing her old enemies, 
the ^Equi, who now disappear as an independent state. 
Rome then set herself to obtain by intrigue, alliances and 
arms, the command of the cities of Latium and, on the 
rebuilding of the city, was engaged in wars as before. 

The Roman contests with the Volsci, Etruscans and 
Latin states were, on the whole, successful for Rome, and 
by B. C. 375 the south of Etruria (lost by Rome on the 
Gallic invasion) had become permanently Roman terri¬ 
tory. In B. C. 356 the Etruscans were defeated by Rutilus, 
the first Plebeian censor and dictator, and further attacks 
by the Gauls were repulsed. Then began (about B. C. 
343) a struggle of the rising state against the powerful 
nation called the Samnites. Rome was for a time in alli¬ 
ance with towns of Latium and Campania, and her war 
with Samnium was really the beginning of the conquest 
of Italy. Some battles were gained by the Romans, but 


HISTORY OF ROME 


207 


in B. C. 340 a treaty of peace and alliance was concluded 
with Samnium, and Rome then found herself face to face 
with a league of the Latins and Campanians. 

The Latin War began in B. C. 340, and lasted for 
three years. The Latin and allied forces were defeated 
in B. C. 340 near Mount Vesuvius by a Roman army under 
the consuls Manlius Torquatus and Decius Mus, and after 
another Roman victory the subjugation of Latium was 
completed in B. C. 338. The great Latin league of cities 
came to an end; the lands of Latium were partly allotted 
to Roman colonies of Plebeians established on the con¬ 
quered territory as garrisons. Some of the Latins re¬ 
ceived the Roman citizenship, and some were made mere 
subjects, so as to divide the interests of the Latins and 
permanently strengthen the position of Rome. At the 
same time all the excluded Latins could look forward to 
acquiring Roman citizenship, and in this politic way the 
fidelity of all to Rome was secured. 

Thus strengthened, Rome began her second Samnite 
War in B. C. 327, engaging in a struggle for life and 
death, in which the Samnites fought with the heroic cour¬ 
age of their race, and repeatedly gained great battles over 
the Romans, but were at last overpowered by Roman per¬ 
severance, energy and skill. The chief generals on the 
Roman side were Papirius Cursor, five times consul and 
twice dictator, and Fabius Maximus. The great cham¬ 
pion of the Samnites was the famous Caius Pontius. In 
,B. C. 321, after some victories, the Romans suffered both 
disaster and disgrace in the surrender of a whole army 
*to the Samnites, entrapped by them in two narrow moun¬ 
tain passes called the Caudine Forks, on Mount Taburnus, 
west of Beneventum. The victorious Pontius showed the 
greatest humanity to the conquered Romans, and released 
the army on terms, which the Roman government repaid 


208 ANCIENT AND MEDIEVAL HISTORY 


by breaking the conditions of surrender, and refusing to 
give up conquests and to conclude an alliance. The 
Romans afterward gained the upper hand, and the second 
Samnite war ended in B. C. 304 by a temporary submis¬ 
sion of Samnium. 

The Third Samnite War began in B. C. 298, and the 
Samnites were now aided, in their last desperate struggle 
for national independence, by the Etruscans, Umbrians 
and Senonian Gauls. The Samnite generals, Pontius, 
one of the great men of ancient days, and Gellius Egnatius, 
made a brilliant strategical move by marching northward 
into Etruria and joining their powerful confederates there 
with their whole force. In B. C. 295 the decisive battle of 
Sentinum ( in Umbria) was fought. There the Romans, 
under Fabius Maximus, defeated the Samnite confederates 
with great slaughter and the loss of the leader Egnatius. 
For five years more the struggle was protracted. In B. C. 
292 the gallant Pontius was defeated, taken prisoner, and 
barbarously executed by the Romans at their general’s 
triumph in Rome. No more disgraceful act stains the 
annals of Rome than this cruel treatment of the generous 
and gallant foe who, nearly thirty years before, had spared 
a Roman army at the Caudine Forks, and had forborne to 
seek vengeance for the vile treachery with which his mercy 
was requited. The great modern historian of Rome, Dr. 
Arnold, a man whose own admirable character lends 
crushing weight to his deliberate condemnation of wrong, 
brands this infamous deed by declaring that “it proves but 
too clearly that, in their dealings with foreigners, the 
Romans had neither magnanimity, nor humanity, nor 
justice.” After the loss of Pontius the Samnites could 
only keep up a fitful struggle of detached parties, while the 
Roman armies marched to and fro, inflicting utter devasta¬ 
tion on the land. In B. C. 290 the war ended with the 


HISTORY OF ROME 


209 


entire submission of exhausted Samnium, and the Romans 
were now placed, by the conquest of the Samnites and 
Umbrians, in a position of mastery over Central Italy. 

The Romans, in their career of subjugation, had to deal 
next with the Etruscans, and with the old foe, the Senonian 
Gauls. In B. C. 283 the great battle of the Vadimonian 
Lake (in Etruria) was fought, and its results were great. 
The united army of the Gauls and Etruscans was totally 
defeated. Etruria’s day was done; the Senonian Gauls 
were “wiped out.” 

The Romans were now masters of all Northern Italy. 
In B. C. 282 came the struggle in Southern Italy, with the 
Lucanians and Tarentines, which brought the Romans into 
collision—legion against phalanx—for the first time, with 
Greek methods of warfare. After Roman defeats by 
Pyrrhus in B. C. 280 (when the Consul Laevinus was 
beaten at Heraclea, in Lucania, on the river Siris), and in 
B. C. 279 at Asculum (in Apulia), the war was virtually 
ended by the rout of Pyrrhus at Beneventum (in Samni¬ 
um) in B. C. 275. The Roman victor was the renowned 
consul Curius Dentatus, a fine specimen of the old Roman 
for courage, determination, and rugged simplicity of char¬ 
acter and life. He was of Sabine origin; and soon after 
the magnificent triumph he retired to his little farm in the 
Sabine territory, and tilled it with his own hands. The 
defeat of Pyrrhus w T as followed by the capture of Taren- 
tum, and the submission of the Lucanians, Bruttians, and 
all other peoples who had hitherto held out, or risen, 
encouraged by Pyrrhus, against Roman power in Central 
and Southern Italy. By the year B. C. 266 the Roman 
conquest of Italy was completed, and the city on the Tiber 
was mistress of the whole extent of the land, from the 
rivers Rubicon (in north of Umbria) and Macra (in 

northwest of Etruria), on the north (the frontiers of Cisal- 
Vol. 1— 14 


2io ANCIENT AND MEDIAEVAL HISTORY 


pine Gaul), to the towns of Rhegium (on southwest coast 
—the toe), and Brundusium (on the Adriatic Sea—at the 
heel), in the south of Italy. 

Rome had thus become the most compact and powerful 
state in existence, and she was now to show the genius of 
her people for government by the method in which the 
Romans consolidated and organized the territory which 
they had won. The conquered nations of Italy kept in the 
main their own laws, languages and administrations, but 
they looked to Rome as their center and their leader, whom 
they were bound to follow in war, and in connection with 
whom alone future advantages were to be acquired. 

The whole of Italy now comprised, in a political sense, 
three classes. These were, first, the Roman citizens 
(Gives Romani), forming the Roman people in the strict 
technical sense (populus Romanus), the governing body 
of the whole state. These citizens belonged to the thirty- 
five tribes, or wards, or parishes, into which the territory 
of the city of Rome was divided, north of the Tiber beyond 
Veii, and south to the river Liris; to Roman colonies estab¬ 
lished in different parts of Italy; to various municipal 
towns which had received the Roman franchise. Nearly 
all of these citizens (the exceptions being the inhabitants 
of some of the municipal towns) had a right of voting in 
the Comitia Tributa at Rome. 

Second, the Latins (called “Nomen Latinum,” or, “the 
Latin name”). This must be understood in a t£fchnical, not 
in a local, sense (as the towns of Latium were mostly 
municipalities with the Roman franchise), and applies to 
those who belonged to towns having the Latin franchise, 
given originally to the conquered towns of Latium. Any 
male inhabitant of a town with this “Latin franchise” 
could, by holding a public office in his own town, become a 


HISTORY OF ROME 211 

full Roman citizen of the tribes, if he chose to remove to 
Rome. 

Last, the Socii or Allies (called also Fcederatae Civi- 
tates, or Foederati); these were all the other communities 
of Italy, not included in first or second. These “Allied 
States” really existed in various degrees of subjection to 
Rome, having no political privileges, and being bound to 
furnish troops for the Roman armies, but enjoying her 
powerful protection against foreign enemies. With re¬ 
gard to the Nomen Latinum and the Socii, Rome (the 
Gives Romani) retained the sovereign rights of making 
war in which all must join, concluding treaties by which 
all were bound, and coining money which all must recog¬ 
nize and circulate. In this excellent political system, 
which “reconciled municipal freedom with the unity and 
supremacy of the central power,” we see the fitness of 
Rome to govern what she had conquered, and how well 
she was adapted by the genius of her people to subdue and 
to form the world into one vast Empire. By the con¬ 
quest of Italy the wealth of the Roman state was greatly 
increased in the revenues derived from mines, forests and 
harbors which she had acquired; the Patricians and Plebe¬ 
ians alike obtained lands to hold and to till; a solid basis 
of power was obtained, on which to erect the imposing 
fabric of her vast dominion in the days to come. 

Great roads were first made with military purpose of 
providing a way that should be solid at all seasons of the 
year, for the march of legions and their heavy baggage 
through districts subdued by Roman arms. They were 
wonderful pieces of determined practical engineering, and 
in order to carry them straight to the points aimed at, 
marshes and hollows were filled up, or spanned with 
viaducts; mountains were tunneled, streams were bridged; 
no labor, time nor money was spared. As they extended 


2i2 ANCIENT AND MEDIAEVAL HISTORY 


their power through Italy, the Romans constructed such 
roads as these in various directions from the capital, and 
these great highways in Italy must be understood as repre¬ 
senting others which were afterward made, as need arose, 
in every part of the Roman Empire. First and greatest 
of the Italian roads was the famous Appian Way (Via 
Appia, called Regina Viarum, “Queen of Roads”), which 
was begun by Appius Claudius, censor in B. C. 312. The 
struggle with the Samnites was at its height when this 
great causeway, built with large square stones on a raised 
platform, was made direct from the gates of Rome to 
Capua, in Campania. The Via Appia was afterward 
extended, through Samnium and Apulia, to Brundusium, 
on the lower Adriatic, the port of embarkation for Greece. 
Parts of the original stonework are existing at this day. 
Other great roads in Italy were the Via Aurelia—the great 
coast-road northward, by Genua (Genoa), into Transal¬ 
pine Gaul;—the Via Flaminia, through Umbria to Arim- 
inum; and the Via yEmilia, from Ariminum, through 
Cisalpine Gaul, to Placentia. 

We here interpose, as a truce between the clash of arms 
in Rome’s conquest of Italy and in her foreign wars, a 
short account of the Roman gods and worship at the time 
when an “age of faith” in Paganism still existed. The 
two original deities of the Roman Pantheon who belonged 
to it in common with that of the Greeks (with whom, as 
Aryans, they had a common ancestry), were the great 
Jupiter (answering to the Greek Zeus), and Vesta (the 
Greek Hestia). The chief deity of the tribes of Italy was 
Mars or Mavors, the god of “manliness,” and then, by a 
transition natural with the Romans, the god of war. The 
Roman gods of similar name to the Greek deities had often 
very different attributes, and must never be confounded 
with them. The Roman Hercules was a god of property 


HISTORY OF ROME 


213 


and commerce, quite distinct from the Greek demigod 
Heracles, with his heroic exploits and labors. The orig¬ 
inally Sabine goddesses, Juno, the type of queenly woman¬ 
hood, and Minerva, the embodiment of wisdom, were great 
deities at Rome. Janus, the god of opening and shutting 
(really a form of the sun-god, who opens the day at his 
rising, and shuts up light at his setting) is well known 
from his image with double face, and from the covered 
passage at Rome (wrongly called a temple), which was 
left open in war and closed up in peace. Janus is only 
another form of Dianus (god of day), and his sister was 
Diana, the moon goddess. We find also, as remnants of 
the olden worship before Rome existed, certain deities of 
country life. Saturnus was god of sowing and tillage, in 
whose honor a great festival in December was celebrated, 
called the Saturnalia—a time of holiday, feasting, and 
social freedom for seven days. Ceres was goddess of the 
corn crops; Pales and Faunus deities of flocks and shep¬ 
herds. The chief domestic worship was that of Vesta, as 
goddess of the hearth, at whose rites the Roman father of 
the household officiated as priest, and only kinsmen could 
be present; and of the Lares and Penates, the spirits of 
ancestors and guardians of the home. The mythical king, 
Romulus, was worshiped under the name of Quirinus. 

In order to ascertain the will of the gods in important 
matters, the Romans employed Augurs to observe the 
flash of lightning and the flight of birds. This was done 
before every public act or ceremony—the holding of 
Comitia and the fighting of a battle; and in taking the 
auspices, as the mummery of these officials was called, the 
Augur stood in a space of ground which he had conse¬ 
crated by a ceremonial for the purpose. Then, facing the 
south, he watched for a reply to his prayers, beseeching an 
expression of the divine will. A flight of birds or other 


214 ANCIENT AND MEDIAEVAL HISTORY 


sign, appearing on the right hand, was unfavorable; on 
the left, propitious. The Augur waited till the desired 
event occurred, and then announced the result. If no 
Augur were present, signs might be sought from the “sac¬ 
red chickens,” carried about with an army on campaigns: 
if they ate their food heartily, it was favorable; if not, 
unlucky. In the first Punic war a Roman consul, who had 
the chickens with him on shipboard for the purpose of 
augury, was informed that they would not eat at all—the 
worst sign possible. “Let them drink then!” he cried, 
and flung them overboard into the sea. This may be taken 
as an example of how educated Romans, long before the 
republic ended, flung away ancestral creeds and super¬ 
stitions, and became adherents, when they believed in any¬ 
thing, of the Greek philosophers’ belief in one divinity of 
whom they had their various conceptions. 


FOREIGN CONOUEST 

Rome now engaged in the greatest conflict of her his¬ 
tory—that with the powerful maritime and commercial 
state, Carthage. It was a struggle which when it was 
fully developed, became for Rome a fight for national 
existence, in which her enemy was at the height of her 
power and resources, with Spain and Africa at her back, 
and with the first general of the age, perhaps of all ages, 
to command her armies. The interest of the Punic wars 
(as they are called from the word Punicus, the Latin 
equivalent of the Greek Phoinikikos—Phoenician, and, in 
a limited sense, Carthaginian, as used by the Greek his¬ 
torian Polybius) is great and enduring. These wars were 
fought out “not merely to decide the fate of two cities, or 
of two Empires; but to determine which of the two races, 
the Indo-Germanic (otherwise Indo-European or Aryan), 
or the Semitic, should have the dominion of the world. 
On the one side— the Aryan—was the genius for war, 
government, and legislation; on the other—the Semitic— 
the spirit of industry, navigation, and commerce. The 
future of Europe and the world depended on the issue of 
the contest, and the skill and valor, the determination and 
resource, displayed on both sides, have caused these wars 
of Rome and Carthage to remain most vividly impressed 
upon the memories of men/’ 

Carthage had become, by the political and commercial 
energy of her citizens, the leading Phoenician state, ruling 
over Utica, Plippo, Leptis, and other cities of Phoenician 
origin in Northern Africa. The Carthaginians paid also 
great attention to agriculture, and the whole of their terri- 

215 


216 ancient and medieval history 


tory was cultivated like a garden, supplying the population 
with abundance of food. This fact, considered with the 
wealth derived from her commerce, explains to us how it 
was that a city with no large extent of territory was en¬ 
abled to hold out so long against the utmost efforts of 
Rome, and at one period to bring her, as it seemed, to the 
verge of ruin. The political constitution of Carthage was 
that of an oligarchical republic, and her aristocracy is 
famed for the number of able men that came forth from 
its ranks. On the other hand, Carthage was weakened 
by the facts that she was dependent on mercenary troops 
in her wars, subject to revolts at home among the native 
populations whom she oppressed, and hampered by the 
factious spirit prevalent among her leading men. Carth¬ 
age had a great commercial genius, but no gift for assimil¬ 
ating conquered peoples, or for establishing an Empire 
on a solid and enduring basis, and therefore, in the end, 
she succumbed to Rome, whose part it was to bring the 
nations under one wide long-enduring sway. The strug¬ 
gle of Carthage against Rome became, in fact, the contest 
of a man of the greatest abilities—Hannibal—against a 
nation of the utmost energy and determination, and the 
nation, in the long run, won the day. 

The Carthaginians, at this time, held Corsica, Sardinia 
and various colonies in Spain and possessions in Sicily. 
It was in Sicily that the cause of quarrel between Rome 
and Carthage was found, and Rome picked the quarrel by 
interference in a local matter at Messana. Hiero, King 
of Syracuse, soon came over to the Romans, who, after 
defeating the Carthaginian army and taking Agrigentum 
(B. C. 262), determined to make themselves masters of 
Sicily. For this a fleet was needed, and with Roman 
energy they set to work and built one. Twice their 
squadrons were destroyed, but in B. C. 260 the consul 


HISTORY OF ROME 


217 


Duilius gained a great naval victory at Mylse, on the 
northeast coast of Sicily, and from this time Rome became 
more and more nearly a match for Carthage on her special 
element, the sea. The Romans invaded Africa without 
success (B. C. 255), but were generally victorious in 
Sicily. In B. C. 247 the great Hamilcar Barca (father 
of Hannibal and Hasdrubal) was appointed to the Car¬ 
thaginian command in Scicily, and maintained himself 
there with great patience and skill against all the Roman 
efforts. In B. C. 241, however, the Roman commander 
Lutatius Catulus utterly defeated the Carthaginian fleet off 
the yEgates Islands, on the west coast of Sicily, and the 
Carthaginians then gave in. Sicily thus became (B. C. 
241) the first Roman province, the whole island coming 
into the hands of Rome, except the territory of her faithful 
ally, Hiero of Syracuse. 

The Romans, with gross ill-faith and injustice, took 
advantage of a revolt against Carthage by her mercenary 
troops to deprive her of Sardinia and Corsica (B. C. 238), 
and Sardinia was made into a province. The next exploit 
of Rome was the conquest of Cisalpine Gaul, which was 
completed by B. C. 222, and the Roman hold upon the 
new territory was confirmed by the establishment of mili¬ 
tary colonies at Placentia and Cremona. 

Carthage had resolved upon revenge for past defeats 
and injuries from Rome, and intrusted her cause to 
Hamilcar Barca. He formed the bold and ingenious plan 
of creating for his country a new empire in Spain, which 
might be used as a fresh base of operations against the foe 
whom he hated with a deadly hate. From B. C. 237 to 
229 (when he fell in battle) he was engaged in reducing a 
large part of Spain to submission by diplomacy and force. 
In B. C. 221 his son, the illustrious Hannibal, took up 
the Spanish command, and he soon brought on a new 


218 ANCIENT AND MEDIAEVAL HISTORY 


conflict with Rome by his capture of her ally the city of 
Saguntum, on the northeast coast of Spain. 

The Second Punic War is too well known in every 
detail to need much description here. The hero of the 
contest is Hannibal,* one of the purest and noblest charac¬ 
ters in history—a man of whom we know nothing save 
from his foes, and all their wrath and envy have not been 
able to disfigure the portrait which the facts have forced' 
them to transmit to future ages. Great as a statesman, 
supremely great as a soldier, beloved by his troops, and 
justly dreaded by the most warlike people of the ancient 
world, Hannibal stands forth an object for the highest 
admiration and esteem. Of his military capacity it is 
needless to say more than this, that two of the ablest Gen¬ 
erals that ever lived, Napoleon and Wellington, both pro¬ 
nounced Hannibal to be the greatest of all commanders. 

In B. C. 218 the Carthaginian General crossed the 
Alps after a five months’ march from Spain, and 
descended with a storm of war upon the Romans. With 
a force of 20,000 foot and 6,000 horse he encountered 
the consular armies and defeated them at the Rivers 
Ticinus and Trebia (B. C. 218), in Cisalpine Gaul, the 
Thrasymene Lake in Etruria (B. C. 217), and, more de¬ 
cisively than all, and with immense slaughter, at Cannae, 
in Apulia, in B. C. 216. For fifteen years (B. C. 218- 
202) Hannibal maintained his ground in Italy, defeating 
the Romans again and again, opposed by the cautious Fa- 
bius Maximus and the daring Marcellus (the conqueror of 
Syracuse), but unable to capture Rome, or to subdue 
Roman steadfastness and courage. 

The chief causes of the ultimate failure of Hannibal, 
besides the doggedness of Rome’s resistance, were the 
faithfulness of many of Rome’s allies, especially the 
*See volume “ World’s Famous Warriors.” 


HISTORY OF ROME 


219 


Latins, in Italy, the success of Roman armies under Pub¬ 
lius Scipio in Spain (which was for the time subdued by 

B. C. 205), and the want of due support by Carthage to 
her great leader. The crisis came in B. C. 207, when 
Hannibal’s brother, Hasdrubal, crossed the Alps into Italy 
with a powerful army which, joined with Hannibal’s in 
Southern Italy, would probably have effected the conquest 
of Rome, now almost exhausted by her efforts and defeats. 
This was not to be. Hasdrubal was encountered, defeated, 
and slain by the Romans at the decisive battle of the 
Metaurus (a river in Umbria), one of the great critical 
contests in the history of the world. The junction of the 
forces thus prevented, Rome was saved, and in order to 
be rid of Hannibal the war was carried now into the 
enemy’s country. 

Publius Scipio, who had been so successful in Spain, 
crossed from Sicily to Africa in B. C. 204, and did so 
well for Rome that Hannibal was recalled. The Second 
Punic War ended with the defeat of Hannibal by Scipio at 
Zama (five days’ journey from Carthage) in B. C. 202. 
The conqueror gained the surname of Africanus. Han¬ 
nibal lost his army, but not his fame. Rome was made 
certain now to rule the world. The terms of peace with 
Carthage made her for the time a mere dependency of 
Rome. All her foreign possessions were given up; her 
fleet was reduced to ten ships; she was to make no war 
without Rome’s permission; an enormous war-indemnity 
was exacted. 

In B. C. 213 Rome attacked Philip V, King of Mace- 
don, because he had made a treaty with Carthage, and 
after concluding an alliance with the ZEtolians the Romans 
gained some successes over Philip in the First Macedonian 
War, ending in 205. The Second Macedonian War (B. 

C. 200-197) put an end to Macedon’s supremacy in Greece 


220 ancient and mediaeval history 


by the victory of the ex-consul Flamininus at Cynos- 
cephalae in Thessaly, B. C. 197. Antiochus the Great of 
Syria was next attacked. He had irritated Rome by 
meddling in the affairs of Greece, which he invaded in B. 
C. 192. He was defeated by the Roman armies both in 
Greece and Asia Minor, and in B. C. 188 made peace on 
terms that left Roman influence supreme in Asia Minor 
as far as the borders of Syria. 

Hannibal, the great Carthaginian, even after Zama, 
had not despaired of himself or of his country. He set 
vigorously to work at internal reforms in Carthage with 
a view to renewing the contest with Rome; but being 
thwarted by jealous and unpatriotic rivals, who also in¬ 
trigued for his surrender to the Romans, he fled to the 
court of Antiochus the Great of Syria in B. C. 194. In 
throwing away her greatest man Carthage had lost her 
last chance of regaining any real power. Hannibal was 
driven from his shelter with Antiochus by the Roman 
demand for his surrender, and took refuge with Prusias, 
King of Bithynia, for some years; but Roman dread of his 
abilities and influence pursued him, and, hopeless of escape, 
he poisoned himself about B. C. 183, leaving Rome free at 
last to pursue her victorious career without any opponent 
likely to arrest it. A third Macedonian War, begun in 
B. C. 171, was waged by the Romans against King Per¬ 
seus, son of Philip V, and ended with a great Roman 
victory at Pydna in B. C. 168, and the extinction of Mace- 
don as a kingdom. After a revolt, called the Fourth 
Macedonian War, and a war against the forces of the 
Achaean League, Corinth was taken by Mummius, and 
Macedonia and Greece became Roman provinces (B. C. 
147-146). 

There was a powerful party in Rome (headed by the 
famous and stern censor, Porcius Cato), who relentlessly 


HISTORY OF ROME 


221 


insisted on the destruction of Carthage. Her warlike 
neighbor, Masinissa, King of Numidia, was encouraged by 
the Romans in harassing attacks, and in B. C. 149 Rome 
found a pretext for war. Her forces could not be resisted, 
and Carthage offered a complete submission, seeking the 
preservation of her commerce and her capital by a sur¬ 
render of arms, warships, and the internal independence 
hitherto belonging to her. When Rome insisted on the 
destruction of the city of Carthage itself, and the removal 
of the inhabitants to inland abodes, the Carthaginians took 
counsel of despair, and resolved to stand a siege within 
their strong fortifications. Scipio Africanus Minor 
(really a son of yEmilius Paulus, the conqueror of Mace¬ 
donia, and adopted by a Roman custom into the Scipio 
family) conducted the three years’ siege of the great com¬ 
mercial city and her citadel, and Roman determination as 
usual carried its point. After fearful house-to-house 
fighting the remnant of 700,000 people surrendered; the 
place was set on fire, and burned for seventeen days; the 
ruins were leveled with the ground, and Carthage the 
proud city, alike with Carthage the commercial state, had 
ceased to exist, in B. C. 146, the same year as saw the final 
conquest of Greece. Part of the territory was given to 
Masinissa of Numidia, Rome’s ally, part became the 
Roman Province of Africa. 

The great peninsula to the west of Italy was inhabited 
chiefly by people called Iberians (not of Aryan race), and 
by Celtic tribes, who had made their way into the central 
part of the land. During the Second Punic War the Car¬ 
thaginian dominion in Spain had been gained for Rome 
by the Scipio’s; but the inhabitants have always been hard 
to master thoroughly in war, and even the Romans found 
the task long and difficult. The north and northwest of 
the country, indeed, remained independent till the time 


222 


ANCIENT AND MEDIAEVAL HISTORY 


of the Empire. The Celtiberians, tribes of mixed origin in 
Central Spain, were conquered by about B. C. 180, after 
a long resistance. The part of Lusitania (modern Portu¬ 
gal) to the south of the Tagus was mastered after a brave 
struggle maintained for some years by a gallant leader 
named Viriathus, with whom the Romans made a treaty, 
prior to his assassination by their connivance, in B. C. 
140. The conquest of the center and south of Spain was 
completed in the capture and destruction of the strong city 
of Numantia, near the source of the Douro, by Scipio 
Africanus Minor (the younger) in B. C. 133. The coun¬ 
try had long before been divided by Rome into two prov¬ 
inces, respectively to the east and west of the Iberus or 
Ebro, called Hispania Citerior and Hispania Ulterior 
(“hither” and “further” Spain). 

The subjugation of Spain, though still incomplete, was 
an important event in the development of the Roman 
dominion on the Mediterranean coasts. I11 subduing 
Spain, Rome was taking civilization to a land of peoples 
almost new to the culture of the east and center of the 
Mediterranean world. The inhabitants were brave, tem¬ 
perate, hardy, warlike, proud, and strongly attached to 
freedom, and they were now to show themselves, in a 
marked degree, capable of taking up the new ideas, cus¬ 
toms, and language conveyed into their midst by the con¬ 
querors. The country was in course of time quite trans¬ 
formed and Romanized; the Latin language was adopted, 
the literature both of Greece and Rome was taught in the 
schools, and under the emperors many distinguished 
authors in the Latin tongue were of Spanish birth. The 
modern language of the country is so closely derived from 
Latin that a scholar can readily divine the general mean¬ 
ing without special study. The kingdom of Pergamus 
became very extensive after the defeat by the Romans of 


HISTORY OF ROME 


223 


Antiochus the Great of Syria in B. C. 190. Rome then 
gave nearly all the south and west of Asia Minor to Eum- 
enes II, King of Pergamus. In B. C. 133, King Attalus 
III bequeathed the whole of his dominions to the Roman 
people, and the Province of Asia was formed. 

At the beginning of the period now treated of—B. C. 
266—Rome possessed only the peninsula of Italy; nor 
was she mistress of the whole of that, for Liguria, south of 
Cisalpine Gaul, was not subdued till long after the second 
Punic War. At the close of this epoch —hy B. C. 133— 
Rome was the one great power of the world—possessor of 
most that was worth having (save Gaul, Egypt, and 
Syria) on the Mediterranean shores. In Europe, Asia, 
Africa, she ruled these territories—Italy, Sicily, Sardinia, 
Corsica, Cisalpine Gaul, the south and center of Spain, 
the late territory of Carthage in Africa, Northern and 
Southern Greece, and most of Asia Minor. Wherever she 
had not yet carried her conquering arms, the Roman name 
had become one of fear to the nations who had seen coun¬ 
try after country mastered or absorbed by the all-embrac¬ 
ing, irresistible Republic. The conquered provinces were 
governed by ex-consuls and ex-praetors, who went out 
there with the title of Proconsul or Propraetor, attended 
by a whole army of officials. The wealthy order in the 
state known as the Equites (Knights) farmed the taxes 
and the tribute levied from the provincials, and publicani, 
or collectors of public revenue (the publicans of Scrip¬ 
ture), were scattered over the whole Roman world, and 
were held in very bad repute. The Proconsuls and Pro¬ 
praetors had the highest military and civil powers in their 
governments, and their eager desire to return to Rome 
with abundant means caused gross oppression of the people 
in the provinces. The grand passion of the Romans at 
this time was to amass money, whether by plunder in war, 


224 ANCIENT and mediaeval history 

usury at home, or speculation and commerce abroad. The 
provincial governors received gifts from states and kings 
not yet subdued, bribes for their decisions in law-suits, and 
a share of the plunder made by extortionate tax-gatherers. 

As the Senate alone appointed the provincial gov¬ 
ernors, and confined the appointments to Senators, it was 
the chief object of a rising citizen of Rome to become a 
member of that ruling body. The position could only be 
reached by holding the high offices in the state, and in 
order to secure election by the assemblies (Comitia) to 
these offices, it was needful to get the votes of the people 
by providing expensive shows in the theater and circus, 
and, as the degradation deepened, by direct bribes. After 
passing through the quaestorship, aedileship, praetorship, 
and consulship on these terms, a man would enter the 
Senate with an enormous load of debt, and could only hope 
to pay his creditors and acquire a fortune for himself by 
the proceeds of his term of office in a province as Proprae¬ 
tor or Proconsul. It is true that a provincial governor 
was liable to prosecution at Rome on his return, for crimes 
committed in his public capacity; but the Senatorial judges 
before whom he would have to appear were as much open 
:o bribes as the voters in the Comitia, and part of the plun¬ 
der of the provinces was thus devoted to securing im¬ 
punity at Rome for those who robbed Rome’s unhappy 
subjects. 

The old class of Roman citizens, under the military 
system of universal service and the losses of the Punic 
and other wars, had greatly diminished in numbers. The 
soldiers of the armies that went out to the provinces often 
remained there as military colonists, and Rome and Italy 
received in exchange millions of foreign slaves. These 
men, frequently set free, became Roman citizens, and the 
old race, both in the city and in Italy at large, rapidly 


HISTORY OF ROME 


325 


degenerated through intermarriages of Italians with these 
foreigners from all quarters of the Roman world. The 
lower order in Rome thus became in time a mere mob, 
living in idleness by the price of its votes, and on the cheap 
or gratuitous corn from Sicily and Africa, which was 
distributed by the Senate to appease popular discontents. 
The original Patricians and Plebeians had become classes 
of rich men and paupers, with no middle class of yeoman- 
farmers (or peasant-proprietors) and merchants to hold 
the political balance, and give stability to the constitutional 
order of things. 

The sudden and vast increase of wealth flowing to 
Rome from such conquests as those of Carthage, Greece, 
and Asia, brought with it great luxury and its attendant 
vices. The newly-enriched Senators and knights, spurn¬ 
ing the protests and scorning the example of such men as 
Cato the Censor, and those who kept to the olden simple 
style of iife, plunged into all the extravagances that Greek 
and Asiatic fashions prompted, and that Roman want of 
purity in taste soon carried to a monstrous excess. Money 
was lavished upon mansions in Rome, decked out with 
richest furniture and plate; on country houses, pleasure- 
grounds, and fish-ponds to supply a favorite Roman food; 
on dancing-girls, musicians, and troops of like artistic or 
of menial slaves; on foreign wines and dainty dishes; on 
toadies and buffoons. The old regard for marriage and 
the sanctity of home declined, and Roman conquests had 
thus caused evils that were swiftly sapping the very foun¬ 
dations of the free state—the grand old republic of Rome. 

A more beneficial use of the new wealth was the em¬ 
ployment of it by ambitious men, and by the state officials, 
on works of public service and adornment. There were 
buildings at Rome called Basilicse, which served as courts 

of law and as places of meeting for men of business. Of 
Voi., 1 — 15 


236 ANCIENT AND MEDIAEVAL HISTORY 


these (which were rectangular halls, with rows of columns, 
and a recess at one end for the tribunal), the Basilica Por- 
cia was erected in B. C. 184, the Basilica Fulvia in 179, 
and the Basilica Sempronia in 171. The Porticoes (Por- 
ticus) were covered with paved walks, open on one side, 
and supported by columns. The Porticus Metelli was 
built by the Proprietor Metellus after his triumph over 
Perseus, King of Macedonia, B. C. 146. Among the most 
important and celebrated of the public works of ancient 
Rome were the Aqueducts (Aquseductus or Aquae), for 
supplying the city with water from the hills outside. 
Some of these are still used to supply modern Rome. Of 
others the stupendous remains are visible in the Campagna 
di Roma (the undulating district round Rome), and in 
various countries which were formerly provinces of the 
Empire. The first of these was the Aqua Appia, begun 
by the censor Appius Claudius in B. C. 313. The Anio 
Vetus (or ‘‘ancient Anio”), begun in B. C. 273, brought 
water to Rome from the river Anio, eighteen miles away. 
It was mostly underground, and the windings of the course 
taken made the whole work over forty miles in length. 
The Aqua Marcia, famed for the coldness and purity of 
the water which it conveyed, was built in B. C. 144, at the 
public expense, by the praetor Quintus Marcius. It began 
nearly forty miles from Rome, and was of great height and 
solidity, proceeding for several miles on arches, of which 
remains are still visible. In such works as these the 
Romans displayed their practical character. 

The physical might of Rome had subdued Greece, but 
the mind of Greece mastered Rome. The Greeks became 
the teachers of their conquerors. The deities of Greece 
were incorporated into the national faith of Rome. Greek 
literature became the education of the Roman youth. 
Greek philosophy was almost the only philosophy the 


HISTORY OF ROME 


227 


Romans knew. Rome adopted Grecian arts, and was 
moulded by contact with Greek life. In name and gov¬ 
ernment the world was Roman, in feeling and civilization 
it was Greek. The chief works of art at Rome either 
came from Greece as part of the plunder of war, or were 
executed there by Greek artists of the later school. Ele¬ 
gance and culture were by nature foreign to the Romans; 
these they sought from Greece, and large numbers of 
Greek slaves were brought to Rome. These Greek slaves 
and freedmen acted as superintendents of factories and 
teachers of the children. The city population also included 
large numbers of Greek musicians, teachers of rhetoric, 
philosophers, secretaries, and copyists (an important class 
when there was no printing), in many cases inmates of the 
houses of the great, whom they instructed and amused. 
The effect of Greek culture and philosophy on the old 
religious belief is also to be observed. Religion declined 
into mere expediency, the educated class protecting pop¬ 
ular superstitions which they despised themselves. 

Roman literature came into existence five centuries 
after the foundation of the city. The old rude Roman 
ballads are entirely lost, and the first Roman poet was 
Livius Andronicus (a native of Magna Graecia), a drama 
by whom was performed at Rome in the year B. C. 240. 
He took his comedies and tragedies from the Greek, being 
master of both tongues. He was followed by Naevius, a 
Campanian, who adapted, from the Greek, comedies in 
which he attacked the Patricians. An epic poem of his 
on the first Punic War furnished matter to Ennius and 
Virgil. Naevius died about B. C. 200. The founder of 
Roman literature is generally said to be Ennius, a native 
of Magna Graecia. He lived between B. C. 239 and 
169. Ennius wrote an epic poem, in dactylic hexameters, 
on the annals of Rome, and this work was the chief epic 


228 ANCIENT AND MEDIAEVAL HISTORY 


poem in Latin until Virgil, borrowing largely from his 
predecessor, surpassed him in his immortal “HMieid.” Of 
these three authors—Andronicus, Naevius, Ennius— 
we have only the scantiest remains. 

The great comic genius, Plautus, wrote between B. C. 
225 and 184. Twenty of his plays remain; and modern 
opinion has ratified the verdict of the Romans, with al? 
classes of whom Plautus was a great favorite. He did 
not merely translate old Greek comedies, but used their 
plots and characters for real Roman work as to dialogue 
and detail. His plays have found imitators among 
modern writers of the highest order, including the great 
Frenchman, Moliere., Terence, or to give him his full 
name, Terentius Afer—“Terence the African,” was born 
at Carthage in B. C. 193, and died in 159. We have six 
of his comedies, adapted from the Greek, and written in 
Latin of perfect elegance and purity. The tragic poet, 
Pacuvius, whose works are lost, flourished about B. C. 
160. He is said to have been an accomplished and vigor¬ 
ous writer. Another tragedian, named Accius, was some¬ 
what later than Pacuvius. Roman tragedy, like Roman 
comedy, was largely imitated from the Greek. 

During and after the Second Punic War (B. C. 218- 
202) the historical writers Fabius Pictor and Cincius Ali- 
mentus, occur; they wrote (in Greek) an account of that 
struggle. The famous censor Porcius Cato (died B. C. 
J49) wrote a historical work on events from Rome’s foun¬ 
dation till his own time; it was called “Origines” (as giv¬ 
ing the origins of Italian towns), and is the first prose 
work in Latin of which we have any considerable remains. 


DECLINE AND FALL OF THE REPUBLIC 


The ‘‘burning question” and chief grievance with the 
mass of the people in Italy was the land question. The 
Licinian Law of B. C. 366, limiting the amount of public 
land to be held by Patricians, and providing for the dis¬ 
tribution of the surplus among the Plebeians, had not been 
carried out, and the former corn-lands of Italy were now 
turned into pasture-land held by the rich in vast domains, 
while the old race of peasant-proprietors had become 
almost extinct. The people had not only lost the land, 
but the love of labor, and were crowded into the towns, 
where they lived on the largesses and bribes of the wealthy, 
and were degraded constantly and increasingly by associa¬ 
tion and intermarriage with the slave population that now 
flooded Italy. 

Tiberius Gracchus, a son of the famous Cornelia (a 
daughter of Scipio Africanus, the victor at Zama) [see 
volume “Famous Women of the World”], became a Tri¬ 
bune (Tribunus Plebis) in B. C. 133, and at once took up 
the cause of his poor and oppressed fellow-citizens. His 
object was to give a share of land (the public land, which 
belonged to the state, and therefore to the people) to each 
free citizen, and so to people Italy once more with citizens 
instead of slaves, and to restore agriculture, which had 
vanished into pasturage. He therefore proposed a bill to 
enforce the Licinian Law, and on the death of Attalus, 
King of Pergamus (bequeathing his kingdom and prop¬ 
erty to the Roman people) Gracchus proposed that this 
property should be distributed so as to allow the new class 
of small landowners to stock their little farms. If these 


229 


33° ANCIENT AND MEDIAEVAL HISTORY 

measures had been carried out, a new middle class would 
have been created, which would have done much to avert 
ruin from the republic. The jealous and avaricious nobles 
rose, and with their own hands and those of their retainers 
murdered Tiberius Gracchus in the Forum during the 
voting for his second tribunate in B. C. 132. His brother, 
Caius Gracchus, was tribune in B. C. 123 and 122, and 
carried several laws in favor of the poor; but he also was 
driven to death by the Senatorial party in 121, during a 
furious outbreak, which ended in the wholesale murder of 
his adherents in Rome. The treatment of the Gracchi bv 
the Patricians was of itself sufficient to show that the old 
Roman respect for law—the basis, the essence, the very 
life of a free state—had now vanished away. The legisla¬ 
tion of the Gracchi was ultimately, and most of it immedi¬ 
ately, neglected or repealed, and the last chance of saving 
the republic was lost. 

The internal history of Rome—almost everything 
apart from foreign conquest—becomes now a history of 
the struggles and domination of individuals, and the prin¬ 
ciple at work is mainly the ascendency of physical force. 
The contests waged involve an aristocratic and a popular 
side—a party striving to maintain the privileges of the 
existing Roman citizens and the predominance of the Sen¬ 
ate, and a party determined to make free citizens of all the 
inhabitants of Italy, and to break down the remaining 
power of the aristocracy. 

At this time the Roman Senate consisted, not of the 
able and patriotic statesmen of the past, but of short¬ 
sighted, selfish oligarchs, who cared for little besides the 
power wielded in the consulship, the vanity gratified in a 
‘‘Triumph,” and the greed glutted in a provincial govern¬ 
ment. On his return from abroad the Roman proconsul 
or propraetor generally gave himself up to ease and luxury 


HISTORY OF ROME 


2 3 l 


for the rest of his days, and let politics alone when they 
had given him all he cared for. The Senate had thus 
become quite unfit to rule at a time when firm and wise 
control was more than ever needed. 

Between B. C. 125 and 120 the Allobroges and other 
tribes in the south of Gaul were subdued, the colony of 
Aquae Sextiae (the modern Aix) was founded there, and 
a Roman province was made in B. C. 120, called by the 
Romans “Provincial or “the Province,” as opposed to the 
rest of Gallia; hence comes the modern name of that dis¬ 
trict—Provence. Jugurtha, King of Numidia (north¬ 
west of Africa), was grandson of Masinissa, who was 
a thorn in the side of Carthage at the close of the second 
Punic War. His connection with Rome is remarkable 
for the gross corruption thereby revealed in the Roman 
Senate, members of which Jugurtha bribed to connive at 
his intrigues and crimes for the possession of the throne 
of Numidia. The war between Rome and Jugurtha lasted 
from B. C. 112 to 106, and in the course of it Jugurtha 
corrupted by bribes two Roman commanders, and defeated 
another. The great Roman general, Marius, ended it by 
defeating and capturing Jugurtha (B. C. 106), who was 
thrown into a dungeon and starved to death after his con¬ 
queror's triumph in 104. Numidia became a Roman 
province about sixty years later. The celebrated Marius, 
who was seven times consul, was born at Arpinum (birth¬ 
place also of the great orator Cicero) in Latium. He 
appears in the civil struggles as champion of the popular 
element against the Roman aristocracy. He was one of 
the ablest generals that Rome produced, but claims no 
higher place in politics than that of a bold, rude, unscrup¬ 
ulous, and arrogant soldier immersed in civil strife. The 
Cimbri were a Celtic people in the northwest of Germany; 
the Teu tones (or Teutons) were a German (Teutonic) 


232 ANCIENT AND MEDIAEVAL HISTORY 

tribe on the Baltic coast. These tribes, to the number of 
300,000 fighting men, with their wives and children, 
moved southward through Gaul, and, as they neared Italy, 
defeated several Roman armies with great slaughter 
between B. C. 113 and 105. After an unsuccessful attack 
on Spain they returned to the Provincia (south of Gaul), 
and there Marius saved the Roman Empire from being 
prematurely overwhelmed by northern barbarians. In B. 
C. 102 he annihilated the Teutones in a great battle near 
Aquae Sextiae (Aix), on a spot where the modern village 
of Pourrieres still preserves the name of Campi Putridi 
(“putrefied fields”), given to the battle-ground from the 
number of decaying bodies. In B. C. 101 Marius de¬ 
stroyed the Cimbri at the battle of Vercellae in Cisalpine 
Gaul. 

The Social or Marsic War was one of the great con¬ 
tests of Rome in the field of battle. The Italian tribes— 
the chief who took part in the war being the Marsi, Picen- 
tes, Peligni, Samnites, Apuli, and Lucani—were now 
claiming the full Roman citizenship, just as the Plebeians 
had done in the old struggles with the Patricians. Rome 
had given up her old wise policy of making new citizens 
out of subjects, and she was now to suffer for it in a 
tremendous and dangerous conflict with the brave and 
indignant Italians. The Latin colonies were faithful to 
Rome, and this alone saved her from ruin. The war con¬ 
tinued during two years, B. C. 90-89, and was of the 
most sanguinary and desperate character. In B. C. 89 
Asculum in Picenum was taken by the Romans and de¬ 
stroyed. The Romans had already detached some of 
their enemies by passing the Lex Julia, giving the Roman 
franchise to the Latin colonies, and to such of the Italian 
allies as gave up the contest; and after further Roman 
successes the matter ended in Rome’s granting all the 




NERO AND HIS MOTHER, AGRIPPINA 
Painting by Fred. Klein-Chevalier 













HISTORY OF ROME 


2 33 


demands of the Italian confederates, when 300,000 brave 
men had fallen on both sides. The Lex Julia was 
extended to the citizens of all towns in alliance with Rome 
throughout Italy, that is to the Socii, and on compliance 
with certain formalities the Roman franchise was thus 
carried to the borders of Cisalpine Gaul. 

Mithridates, King of Pontus, on the Euxine Sea (a 
realm originally formed by a satrap’s revolt from the old 
Persian empire), was a man of boundless energy and 
great ability, who in B. C. 88 attacked the neighboring 
countries Phrygia and Galatia, and became master of the 
Roman province of Asia, where he carried out a general 
massacre of the Roman residents to the number of scores 
of thousands. In the first Mithridatic War (B. C. 88-84) 
Sulla, an able general, and leader of the Senatorial party 
at Rome, defeated the troops of Mithridates in Greece, 
and brought him to terms—Mithridates giving up his con¬ 
quests and paying a large indemnity. The second Mith¬ 
ridatic War lasted from B. C. 74 to 63, and arose out of a 
claim to the possession of Bithynia, bequeathed by its late 
King, Nicomedes, to the Romans. The chief generals on 
the side of Rome were Lucullus and the famous Pompeius 
Magnus (Pompey the Great, the future antagonist of 
Julius Caesar), Mithridates being assisted by his son-in- 
law, Tigranes, King of Armenia. The power of Rome 
prevailed of course in the end, and Mithridates, driven 
from his throne by her arms and by domestic rebellion, 
died in B. C. 63 in what is now the Crimea. 

Meanwhile Rome had been plunged into a civil war. 
This sanguinary contest lasted from B. C. 88 to 82, and 
presents a dreary scene of massacre and plunder. It 
began in a rivalry as to the command in the first Mithri¬ 
datic War, and Sulla, having ready an army to which 
the Senate had appointed him, marched on Rome and 


234 ANCIENT AND MEDIAEVAL HISTORY 


drove Marius into exile, B. C. 88. It was then that 
Marius was seen “sitting on the ruins of Carthage,” 
according to the well-known story. In B. C. 87 Cinna, 
a supporter of Marius (after Sulla had gone to Greece 
against Mithridates), roused the party and recalled 
Marius. Rome was forced to yield, and a fearful mas¬ 
sacre took place of the Senatorial and other enemies of 
Marius, who died in B. C. 86. In B. C. 82 Sulla returned 
to Italy, and defeated the partisans of Marius (who were 
supported by a Samnite army) in a terrific battle outside 
the Colline Gate of Rome (B. C. 82). A general slaugh¬ 
ter of the opposite faction throughout Italy now followed, 
proscriptions or lists of the doomed being regularly pub¬ 
lished. In B. C. 82 Sulla was made “dictator” by the 
Senate, and his soldiers, and the supporters of the Sena¬ 
torial party were rewarded by the plunder derived from 
the confiscated wealth of nearly three thousand slain 
Equites (the rich tax-farming class), and of such Senators 
as were of the Marian faction. Sulla now effected an 
aristocratic revolution, undoing the popular legislation of 
past times, reducing the power of the Tribuni Plebis, and 
abolishing the powers of the Comitia Tributa. He also 
established many military colonies throughout Italy, divid¬ 
ing the lands amongst his old soldiers. In B. C. 79 Sulla 
suddenly resigned his power, and died in B. C. 78. The 
changes he made in the constitution were of little moment 
really, as the free state was virtually dead, and greater 
men than Marius and Sulla were coming to the front to 
contest the sovereignty of the Roman world. 

Cneius Pompeius was one of the ablest generals pro¬ 
duced by ancient Rome. He was born in B. C. 106, and 
fought with great distinction on Sulla’s side in the civil 
war with Marius. He succeeded Sulla as head of th« 


HISTORY OF ROME 


2 55 

aristocratic (Senatorial) party. After some successes 
against Roman revolt in Spain (B. C. 76-71) Pompey 
became consul in B. C. 70, and now figured as the popular 
hero, undoing some of Sulla’s legislation. In B. C. 67 
the famous Gabinian Law (giving special powers for the 
object in view, and carried by the tribune Gabinius), gave 
Pompey a grand opportunity, which he used with con¬ 
summate ability. The Mediterranean Sea was at this time 
infested by pirates so numerous and bold that they plun¬ 
dered cities on the Greek and Asiatic coasts, threatened 
Rome with starvation by cutting off the corn-ships coming 
from Africa and Egypt, and seized persons for ransom 
not far from Rome itself. In three months, by skillful 
arrangements, wise choice of subordinates, and determined 
action, Pompey swept the great central sea clear of these 
rebels and marauders from end to end, and, pursuing the 
chief body to their nests and strongholds on the coast of 
Cilicia, drove them to death or to surrender. 

This exploit was followed by his successes in Asia 
against Mithridates and Tigranes. Pontus was thus 
made a Roman province in B. C. 65. In B. C. 64 
Pompey made Syria a province by deposing the King 
Antiochus. In 63 he subdued Phoenicia and Palestine, 
capturing Jerusalem and returning (with a splendid tri¬ 
umph) to Rome in B. C. 61. Three other prominent men, 
one supremely great, had now arisen in Rome: these were 
Cicero, Crassus, and Julius Gesar. 

Marcus Tullius Cicero (often called “Tully” in old 
English authors) is one of those men of olden time whose 
moral portraits are most familiar to the moderns. We 
know him not only from contemporary history, but from 
his numerous letters to friends, which, besides supplying 
a large part of that history, depict the man himself in vivid 


236 ANCIENT AND MEDIAEVAL HISTORY 

colors. Cicero was born at Arpinum, in Latium, in B. C. 
107, and after a studious youth and early manhood spent 
on law, philosophy, and rhetoric, became a distinguished 
orator about B. C. 76. He addressed assemblies on pub¬ 
lic questions in the forum at Rome, and also practiced as 
an advocate in the law-courts. After passing through 
the regular gradation of state-offices as quaestor, curule 
aedile, and praetor, he became consul in B. C. 63. His 
exploit in this capacity (which Cicero himself never for¬ 
got, nor allowed the world to forget) was the crushing 
of Catiline’s conspiracy, for which the great orator re¬ 
ceived from the Senate the title of “Pater Patriae” (father 
of the fatherland). Cicero’s political position was that 
of a general supporter of the aristocratic or Senatorial 
party. As an orator Cicero was supremely great; as an 
accomplished man of letters he was a master of style, and 
had a great variety of attainments; as a statesman he was 
patriotic, shrewd, weak, and vacillating; as a man he was 
vain, honest, and amiable. 

Marcus Crassus was a man of great political influence 
in Rome, because he was by far the richest man there— 
the possessor of mines, estates, mansions let at high rents, 
and hosts of slaves, who were taught to work at handi¬ 
crafts which brought in large gains to their owner. In 
B. C. 70 Crassus became consul, and feasted all Rome at 
ten thousand tables, besides giving out corn enough to 
keep every citizen and his household for three months. 
His wealth and his zealous courting of the citizens by 
studied affability, and by service rendered in the law-courts 
to those who needed an advocate, gave him much pop¬ 
ularity : he had half the Senate in his debt, and he could 
afford to bribe all judges whom eloquence could not reach. 
He was no statesman, and could only have acquired such 
weight as he did in so corrupt a condition of things as he 


HISTORY OF ROME 


2 37 

found existing in Rome. He was one of the leaders of 
the aristocratic party. 

Caius Julius Cresar* is universally admitted to be the 
foremost man in all the world’s history for varied and, in 
almost all departments, consummate ability. Naturally 
good-hearted, keenly intelligent, brave as a lion, charm¬ 
ingly and weightily eloquent, endued with a marvelous 
memory for things and persons, boundless in generosity, 
cool in anger, gracious in manner, the favorite of the peo¬ 
ple, the best-beloved courtier of Roman ladies, one of the 
purest and most forcible of writers, highly accomplished 
in all the arts of a man of fashion and of a statesman and 
a man of action—he presents a dazzling picture in the 
union of many qualities and attainments, some one or two 
of which suffice to make a man distinguished among ordi¬ 
nary men. In person he is described in Froude’s “Caesar” 
as “tall, slight, handsome; with dark, piercing eyes, sallow 
complexion, large nose, lips full, features refined and intel¬ 
lectual, neck sinewy and thick . . . his dress of studied 
negligence.” He was a noble of the highest position, as 
born in one of the best of the old Roman families, but he 
became in a sense the popular champion as leader of the 
Marian party a good many years (about fifteen) after the 
death of Marius; and, filled with the determination of 
making himself ultimately master of the Roman world, 
he used all men and every means with the greatest skill to 
bring about the preordained result. Caesar was a man 
who could thoroughly “appreciate the wants of the 
moment and the problems of the future;” he was also one 
who could make instruments for his work out of the ideas, 
the circumstances, and the politicians of his day, and so 
he commanded and achieved, in the end, complete and 
brilliant success. He was one of those world-historical 
♦See volume “ World’s Famous Warriors,” 


233 ANCIENT AND MEDIAEVAL HISTORY 

men who possess at once an insight into the requirements 
of the time, a perfect knowledge of what is ripe for devel¬ 
opment, and the heroic qualities of courage, patience and 
endurance needed by him who is to create a new world 
out of the disordered elements of existing decay, and to 
raise the imposing fabric of imperialism on the ruins of 
a republic. Julius Caesar was born in B. C. ioo, and 
gained early distinction as a soldier and an orator. After 
being Quaestor, ^Edile, and Praetor, he warred successfully 
in Spain (as Propraetor) in B. C. 61, returning to Rome 
in the following year. This brings us to the remarkable 
coalition known as the “First Triumvirate.” 

In B. C. 60 the three chief men of Rome—Caesar the 
statesman, Pompey the general, and Crassus the capitalist 
—made an arrangement for the division amongst them¬ 
selves of all the real power in the state. The command of 
money gave them the possession at will of armies of those 
soldiers who had now become mercenaries instead of 
Roman citizens, owing obedience to the constitution; and 
in Pompey and Caesar was found abundant skill to direct 
the military force which would at any moment put the 
Senate and its supporters at their mercy. Cicero held 
aloof when Caesar wished him to join the league, and vain¬ 
ly hoped to be able yet to preserve the commonwealth. It 
was clear that a struggle for supreme power in the hands 
of one must sooner or later arise. In B. C. 59 Caesar was 
consul, and carried a land bill, dividing the rich soil of 
Campania in allotments amongst the poorer citizens. On 
the close of his year of office he was appointed Proconsul 
of the provinces of Cisalpine Gaul, Illyricum, and Trans¬ 
alpine Gaul for the term of five years, with the command 
of four legions, about 25,000 men. It is surmised that 
Caesar sought this important and difficult provincial gov¬ 
ernment with the express object of gaining military fame. 


HISTORY OF ROME 


*39 


and of forging (in the training of an army devoted to his 
service) the weapon which would be needed in the contest 
that was sure to come. During Caesar’s campaigns in 
Gaul, where his government was prolonged for a second 
five-year term, one of the members of the Triumvirate dis¬ 
appeared from the scene. Crassus, after holding the con¬ 
sulship with Pompey in B. C. 55, went out as Proconsul 
to the province of Syria in 54. His greed of wealth and 
desire for the military fame which he envied in Caesar and 
Pompey, brought him to ruin when he was induced to 
attack the Kingdom of Parthia. 

Parthia enjoys in history the rare distinction of being 
a country the prowess of whose warriors baffled the efforts 
of Rome for her subjection. The Parthian Kingdom lay 
to the southeast of the Caspian Sea, and came into exist¬ 
ence about B. C. 250 by revolt from the Seleucidae, the 
monarchs of Syria, which became a powerful realm after 
the death of Alexander the Great The Kingdom of 
Parthia included Parthia proper, Hyrcania, and after¬ 
ward, by conquest about B. C. 130, Bactria, so that at last 
her dominions stretched from the Euphrates to the Indus, 
and from the river Oxus to the Indian Ocean. The inhab¬ 
itants of Parthia proper (the Parthi) were a people of 
Scythian origin, and were noted in war for the skill and 
bravery of their armor-clad horse-archers, who enveloped 
an enemy on all sides, and poured in their missiles, and 
then swiftly retired, firing backwards with great and prov¬ 
erbial effect. The ruling dynasty was called the Arsacidae, 
from the name of Arsaces, the founder. The formidable 
repute of the Parthian warriors was increased by the war 
with Syria in B. C. 131, when they annihilated the Syrian 
army sent against them. The policy of the Parthian rulers 
was very exclusive; strangers were not admitted to their 
dominions, and commerce was sacrificed to their watchful 


240 ANCIENT AND MEDIAEVAL HISTORY 

jealousy. Their establishment in the old Persian Empire 
caused a great change in the lines of commerce between 
the Eastern and Western world. The East India trade, 
stopped in its passage through Babylonia, began to shape 
its course through Northern Arabia and the Red Sea. To 
this change the wealth and splendor obtained by the great 
commercial cities Palmyra and Alexandria must be chiefly 
attributed. The Parthians adopted the Greek religion, 
manners and customs, which had been introduced into 
that part of Asia by Alexander’s conquests. 

It was the downfall of the Kingdoms of Mithridates 
and Tigranes in Asia Minor that brought Parthia into con¬ 
flict with the Roman Empire. The conquest of Armenia 
brought Rome’s frontier close to Parthia, and the ambi¬ 
tion of Crassus did the rest. Crassus crossed the Euphra¬ 
tes in B. C. 53, and was attacked by the Parthians in the 
plains of Mesopotamia. The Roman infantry could do 
nothing against the peculiar tactics of the foe, and Crassus 
retreated, after great slaughter of his troops, to a place 
called Charrae. Then, in a helpless situation, he held par¬ 
ley with the Parthian general, Surenas, and was murdered 
at the interview. The head of Crassus was cut off and 
sent to the Parthian King, Orodes, who caused melted 
gold to be poured into the mouth, in mockery of its late 
owner's love for the precious metal. The Roman stand¬ 
ards (the famous “eagles,” worshiped as gods by the 
Roman troops) had been taken by the Parthians, and the 
remnant of the Roman army became prisoners of war, and 
settled in the East. A more complete disaster, a more 
burning disgrace, never befell the arms of Rome. 

The subsequent history of Parthia may be interesting. 
The renowned cavalry seem to have been all-powerful only 
on their own soil, for their invasions of the Roman prov¬ 
ince of Syria in B. C. 39 and 38 were utterly defeated, 


HISTORY OF ROME 


241 


while the invasion of Parthia by the great Roman general 
and Triumvir, Antonius, in 36, was repulsed with the loss 
of a great part of his army. In B. C. 20 the Parthian 
King, Phraates, restored, chiefly as a friendly concession, 
the standards and prisoners taken from Crassus and Anto¬ 
nius, and this is the event commemorated by the Roman 
poets of the day as equivalent to a submission by Parthia. 
Under the Roman Emperors the Parthians sometimes 
courted and were sometimes at war with Rome, and were 
partially conquered for a time under Trajan. The Par¬ 
thian Kings seem to have encouraged Christianity. In 
A. D. 226 a revolt of the Persians put an end to the Par¬ 
thian Kingdom, revived the religion of Zoroaster, stopped 
the eastward progress of Christianity in Asia, and began 
modern history in Persia. 

Caesar’s eight campaigns in Gaul (B. C. 58-50) are 
described, mainly by himself, in his admirable Commen¬ 
taries. Gaul was bounded by the Rhine, the Alps, the 
Pyrenees, the Atlantic, and the sea now called “the chan¬ 
nel. ” The southern part (Provence) had been conquered 
by the Romans (B. C. 125), and the Roman territory was 
gradually extended as far north as Geneva, and as far 
west as Tolosa (Toulouse). The Belgae, a race of German 
origin, held the north; the southwest of the country was 
occupied by Iberians, a non-Aryan race, the center being 
mainly occupied by Celts, the same race as the Irish, who 
strongly resemble the old Gauls in character—humorous, 
poetical, pious, credulous, shrewd, patriotic, clannish, 
brave, undisciplined, indolent, amiable, clever and imprac¬ 
ticable. The greatest hero of the war on the side of the 
Gauls was the noble, knightly Vercingetorix, who (in B. 
C. 52) most bravely resisted Qesar at Alesia (close to the 
source of the Seine) and was put to death, with true 

Roman barbarity, after his conqueror’s triumph at Rome, 
VoIm i 16 


242 ANCIENT AND MEDIAEVAL HISTORY 


in B. C. 45. The chief incidents of Caesar’s great contest 
in Gaul are his dispersion of the emigrant hosts of the 
Ilelvetii and the expulsion of the Germans, who had 
invaded Gaul under Ariovistus in B. C. 58; his conquest 
of the Belgae and the Aquitani in 57 and 56 ; his invasions 
of Britain in 55 and 54, and his subduing of Gallic revolts, 
including the great rising of Vercingetorix, between B. C. 
53 and 51, when Gallia Transalpina was finally and wholly 
subdued, and the Roman dominion was extended to the 
Rhine and the Channel. 

In his treatment of the conquered Gauls Caesar showed, 
on several occasions, the inhuman cruelty and the perfidy 
which marked the dealings of Romans with their foes. In 
the means which Caesar employed to subdue the Gauls 
he displayed powers of mind which rank him among the 
greatest generals of all history. With little previous 
experience of war, he now adapted means to ends with 
the utmost skill, showed wonderful foresight and swift¬ 
ness of movement, and trained for its future work an army 
of such excellence as has rarely indeed followed a general 
into the field—an army like unto that with which Welling¬ 
ton crossed the Pyrenees triumphant into France; a force 
of which he said himself, though he was no boaster, that 
“it could go anywhere and do anything.” The importance 
of the conquest of Gaul in the history of the world is that 
it brought the old world of Southern Europe, of which 
Rome was the head, into contact with the lands and nations 
which were to play the greatest part in later times, with 
Gaul, Germany, and Britain. The importance of the con¬ 
quest of Gaul in the career of Julius Caesar is that it gave 
him, in his splendid and victorious army, the lever with 
which he revolutionized the Roman commonwealth; for 
these legions afterward conquered Pompey and the 


HISTORY OF ROME 


2 43 

Senate, and the Gallic campaigns made Caesar the idol 
of the soldiery of Rome. 

Caesar’s brilliant and solid successes in Gaul had 
aroused a strong jealousy in Pompey, and an indignant 
fear in the Senate, who now brought Pompey over to their 
views, and made him again their champion. The greatest 
enmity soon existed between the rivals, and only an occa¬ 
sion for outbreak into civil war was needed. This occa¬ 
sion arose when Caesar was ordered by the Senate, at 
Pompey’s instance, to lay down his proconsular command, 
B. C. 50 (Caesar being then, after the pacification of Gaul, 
in Gallia Cisalpina, south of the Alps), and to return as 
a private citizen to Rome. This was in reply to Caesar’s 
request to be allowed to stand for the consulship (of B. C. 
48) without coming to Rome, as his (second) term of 
command over Gaul had still a year to run. The object of 
the Senate and of Pompey was simply this—to get Caesar 
into their hands; in which case he would have probably 
died after a mock trial. Julius Caesar was scarcely the 
man to be caught in this way, and he replied in a decisive 
way to the Senate’s order, either to disband his army or 
to be accounted a public foe. A little river called the 
Rubicon flowed into the Adriatic Sea, at the frontier-line 
between Italy and Cisalpine Gaul. To pass that stream 
with an armed force, from his province into Italy, would 
be an act of open defiance to the Senate, and (in constitu¬ 
tional law, if there had been any constitution left to vio¬ 
late) an act of treason to the state, and a declaration of civil 
war. In the early days of B. C. 49 Caesar settled the mat¬ 
ter, with the resolution that belonged to him, by crossing 
the Rubicon at the head of his devoted and well-disciplined 
troops. 

Caesar swept onward with a vigor that at once drove 


244 ANCIENT AND MEDIAEVAL HISTORY 


Pompey and the Senate over the narrow sea to Greece, 
and made the invader master of all Italy within sixty 
days. On entering Rome, Caesar was appointed consul 
for B. C. 48, and turned his first attention, in the summer 
of 49, to Spain, where he defeated the Pompeiian armies 
under Afranius and Petreius, making the west safe before 
going eastward to encounter Pompey. Caesar crossed over 
into Greece early in 48, and found Pompey established 
there with a powerful army. At Dyrrhachium, in Illyria, 
Pompey defeated Caesar, who had attacked his fortified 
position, and then followed him into Thessaly. 

There, on the plains of Pharsalia, a decisive battle, 
fought in August, B. C. 48, ended in the total defeat of 
Pompey. He fled to Egypt, and was murdered there 
before Caesar could arrive to save him, by order of the 
ministers of the King of Egypt Caesar shed tears of 
genuine sorrow at the sight of his slain rival’s head, and 
promptly executed the assassins. It is important to 
observe that there is in existence documentary evidence 
which amply proves that, if the senatorial party had been 
successful, a fearful and widespread “proscription” (as 
under Sulla) would have taken place, and the Roman 
Empire would have become the prey of a few abandoned 
nobles. From such horrors the victory of Caesar saved 
the Roman world. 

On his arrival in Egypt, Caesar became involved in a 
quarrel which the famous Cleopatra* induced him to take 
up on her behalf. She was co-sovereign of Egypt along 
with her brother, Ptolemy, and, having been expelled by 
his party, was seeking to force her way back with an army 
raised in Syria. Caesar had only a small force with him, 
and the contest (called the “Alexandrine War,” from the 
city where the fighting occurred) waged by him with the 

♦See volume “Famous Women of the World/’ 


HISTORY OF ROME 


245 


King’s troops was of a desperate character. Caesar was 
besieged in Alexandria, and had to fight for his life; the 
Egyptian fleet was burnt, and along with it a large part 
of the famous library, with its invaluable manuscripts. In 
March, B. C. 47, the struggle ended in Caesar’s favor, and 
he made his way back to Rome through Syria and Asia 
Minor, arriving at the capital in September. 

During Caesar’s absence in the East, the Pompeian 
party had rallied in Africa, and in September, B. C. 47, 
he sailed to encounter his enemies there. Cato the younger 
(surnamed Uticensis or “of Utica,” from the place of his 
death), a descendant of the famous Cato the Censor, had 
gathered a large army of Italians and Numidians, which 
Caesar routed, in April, B. C. 46, at the battle of Thapsus, 
a town on the coast, westward from Malta. At Utica, 
northwest from the site of Carthage, Cato killed himself 
in stoical despair of the republic, and the capture of Utica 
ended the war in Africa. 

Caesar returned to Rome in July, 46, and had four 
splendid triumphs for his victories in Gaul, Egypt, Pontus 
(where he had defeated Pharnaces, son of Mithridates, 
on his way back from Egypt), and Africa. His position 
was secure, and one of the brightest features of his char¬ 
acter, his clemency toward beaten fellow citizens, was dis¬ 
played in the use he made of his victory. There was no 
vengeance, no “proscription,” no difference made between 
victors and vanquished. The Roman Republic was at an 
end, and the Roman monarchy had virtually begun. 

Pompey’s two sons, Cneius and Sextus, had gathered 
a powerful army in Spain, and Caesar proceeded thither 
late in B. C. 46. In March, 45, at Munda, the Pompeian 
army was defeated, after one of Caesar’s hardest-fought 
engagements. 

The new constitution established by Caesar had this 


246 ANCIENT AND MEDIAEVAL HISTORY 


essential principle—that the sovereign authority over the 
provinces and the direction of public policy resided ulti¬ 
mately in one man. The Senate survived as a council of 
state; the magistrates administered their old functions; 
the Imperator (meaning commander-in-chief, from 
which the word “Emperor” is derived) was the real execu¬ 
tive, and the legions were the instruments of rule. The 
republic, under which crime had been licensed, justice 
publicly sold, and the provinces used as a gold-mine for 
profligate nobles, had become impossible, and monarchy, 
under republican forms and names, was the substitute 
made for it. When Caesar returned to Rome from Spain 
in September, B. C. 45, he was appointed Dictator and 
Imperator for life, his effigy was to be struck on coins; 
the month formerly called Quintilis, was named Julius 
(our July) in his honor, and the senate took an oath of 
allegiance and devotion to his person. 

As master of the Roman dominions, Caesar did enough 
to prove that he was as capable of ruling as of winning 
an Empire; of benefiting as of conquering mankind. In 
B. C. 46 he had effected the important work of reforming 
the calendar, which, from inaccurate reckoning, had fallen 
into confusion, so that the real time was three months 
behind the nominal. A Greek astronomer was called in to 
rectify matters, and the Julian calendar remained in use 
till A. D. 1582. He formed great plans for the public 
good. If Qesar had been allowed to live, the still malari¬ 
ous Pomptine (or Pontine) Marshes, on the coast of 
Latium, would have been drained and turned into health¬ 
ful, profitable land; and the river Tiber, still mischievous 
from inundations, would have flowed in a deeper and safer 
channel. Among his beneficent designs were the codifi¬ 
cation of the Roman law, the establishment of public libra¬ 
ries, the cutting of a canal through the Isthmus of Corinth, 


HISTORY OF ROME 


247 


and the development of trade by the enlargement of the 
ha r bor at Ostia. A genius so universal, backed by a spirit 
so enlightened, might at once have restored the decayed 
agriculture of Italy, and extended and secured the 
boundaries of the Empire on the Danube and in the East 
—for these things, with divers other schemes, had entered 
into his all-embracing mind. All was cut short and ren¬ 
dered vain by the lowest baseness of human envy, and the 
worst foolishness of human folly. Caesar had been fully 
accepted by the great mass of the Romans as their one 
possible, their one peaceful ruler, when his career was 
brought to the sudden and tragical end known to all the 
world. 

There is no need to dwell on the crime of the probably 
sincere and fanatical Brutus, and the assuredly malignant 
and ungrateful Cassius, who were the prime movers in 
the plot that slew Julius Caesar. On the Ides (15th) of 
March, B. C. 44, in the Senate-house at Rome, called 
“Curia Pompeii,” the greatest man in history died by the 
daggers of assassins.* He fell, bleeding from many 
wounds, at the foot of the statue of Pompey, whom he had 
pursued with intent only to spare, whose fate he had be¬ 
wailed, whose friends he had first conquered and then for¬ 
given, only to be murdered by their hands at last. Julius 
Caesar was in the fifty-sixth year of his age when he died, 
and left his work unfinished, and his power as a prize for 
the victor in another inevitable civil war. 

Marcus Antonius the Triumvir (known in old Eng* 
Iish authors as “Mark Antony,” and generally as “An- 
tony”) was born about B. C. 83, and gained early distinc¬ 
tion as a General, serving under Caesar in Gaul, com¬ 
manding the left wing of the victorious army at Phar- 
salia, and acting usually as Caesar’s representative in 

♦See volume “World’s Famous Warriors.” 


z 4 8 ANCIENT AND MEDIAEVAL HISTORY 

his absence, and his chief supporter in Rome. At the 
time of the assassination he was Consul along with Caesar, 
and his eloquence roused the people, and drove Brutus, 
Cassius, and their faction among the Senators to seek 
safety in flight from Rome. Antony’s object was to suc¬ 
ceed to Caesar’s power, but there was a rival in the way. 
This was Caesar’s great-nephew and adopted son, Caius 
Octavius (better known by his imperial title of “Augus- 
tus Caesar”), whose legal name (after adoption) was 
Caius Julius Caesar Octavianus. The Senate at first 
sided with Octavianus, and afterward veered round to 
Antony. The result was a coalition known as the “Sec¬ 
ond Triumvirate.” 

Antony, Octavius, and Lepidus (an insignificant per¬ 
son, from lack either of ability or of energy) arranged, in 
B. C. 43, to divide the supreme power amongst them¬ 
selves. The first step needed was to crush their enemies, 
and this Octavius and Antony did with a cruelty more 
disgraceful than that shown in the proscriptions of Mar¬ 
ius and Sulla. Slaughter lists were made out, and bands 
of murderers and plunderers let loose on the victims. 
Hundreds of Senators, thousands of knights (the 
11 Equites ”), and many thousands of citizens were slain, 

and their property plundered. The most illustrious of 
the victims was the great orator Cicero, who had pro¬ 
voked the rage of Antony by denouncing him in the 
speeches known as “Cicero’s Philippics.” The triumvirs 
then turned against Brutus and Cassius, who had raised a 
large army in the East, and taken up their position in 
Thrace. In November, B. C. 42, Antony and Octavius 
utterly defeated them at the two battles of Philippi, in 
the east of Macedonia, and Brutus and Cassius died by 
self-murder. The attempt to galvanize the dead repub¬ 
lic into life had signally and finally failed. 


RECONSTRUCTION OF “ROMA IMMORTALIS,” AUGUSTAN AGE 


Theater 



r l emple of Jupiter 


Circus Maximus 


Tabularium 


The Palatine 


Forum 


Coliseum 
































































- 




































































































HISTORY OF ROME 


249 

The Roman world was now divided amongst the vic¬ 
tors. Antony took the portion eastward from Italy, Oc- 
tavianus the west, and Lepidus had Africa assigned to 
him. A confused period of conflicts and quarrels 
between the triumvirs ensued. In B. C. 40 the peace of 
Brundusium reconciled Antony and Octavianus for a 
time; in B. C. 36 Lepidus was expelled from the league, 
and returned from his province to live quietly at Rome. 
The conduct of Antonius with Cleopatra, the fascinating 
Queen of Egypt, at last occasioned the certain rupture 
between him and Octavianus. Antony had married 
Octavia, his rival’s sister, and then divorced her in order 
to marry Cleopatra. With her at Alexandria he assumed 
the pomp and lived the life of an Eastern despot, and his 
doings had disgusted many of his own supporters. The 
wary, cool, and hypocritical Octavianus had meanwhile 
been strengthening his position in Italy and the West by 
rewarding veterans with lands, and cementing the attach¬ 
ment of his legions to his person; by successful warfare in 
Illyria and Pannonia (northeast of Adriatic Sea), and by 
the general contrast of his actions with those of the reck¬ 
less Antony. In B. C. 32 the Senate declared war against 
Cleopatra, and this meant that Octavius and Antonius 
were to meet in a decisive struggle. 

Antony had gathered his fleet (aided by Cleopatra in 
person with sixty galleys) and his army at Actium on the 
Ambracian Gulf, south of Epirus, and there Octavius 
encountered him in the first days of September, B. C. 
31. The contest was decided by a naval battle, in the 
midst of which Cleopatra fled with the Egyptian squad¬ 
ron, and was ignotniniously followed by Antony, whose 
ships and army then surrendered to his foe. In the fol¬ 
lowing year (B. C. 30) Octavianus followed Antony and 
Cleopatra to Alexandria, where the unhappy pair com- 


250 ANCIENT AND MEDIAEVAL HISTORY 

mitted suicide—he with his sword, she with a poisonous 
snake, the asp—rather than fall into the hands of the 
cold-blooded conqueror, who would have killed the one 
and kept the other to grace a Roman triumph, as a cap¬ 
tive, with her charms. Egypt, in B. C. 30, thus became 
a Roman Province, and Rome’s dominion in the Medi¬ 
terranean basin now became formally, as it had long been 
virtually, complete. 

The Roman Empire, replacing the Roman Republic, 
had become a fact, being founded by Julius Caesar, after 
the battle of Pharsalia, and now to be consolidated by 
Octavianus, after Actium. The conqueror in the last 
civil strife was at the head of a vast military force, de¬ 
voted to his service. The provinces, long oppressed by 
the proconsuls and propraetors of the commonwealth, 
hailed the accession to power of a single absolute ruler, 
who would, it was hoped, put an end to all tyranny of 
petty Governors. The people of Rome, rejoicing in the 
humiliation of the aristocracy, and desiring only to be 
fed with imported corn, and amused by the spectacles of 
the circus and the theater, were equally ready to submit 
to the monarch who would supply them with both. All 
citizens of wealth and culture, desiring ease and quiet as 
the greatest of earthly blessings, rejoiced in the prospect 
of relief from the blood and violence of the past. The 
Republican faction had perished either on the field of 
battle or by the murders of the proscription. The Sen¬ 
ate had lost authority and dignity alike, having been 
largely increased in numbers by the admission of Gauls 
and other provincials under Julius Caesar’s brief tenure 
of power, and was prepared to give its formal sanction to 
all that a master should ordain. 

In B. C. 29 Octavianus returned to Rome and cele- 


HISTORY OF ROME 


251 


brated three triumphs for his successes in Dalmatia, and 
over Antonius, and for the addition of Egypt to the 
Roman dominion. The so-called “Temple” of Janus 
was shut in token of general peace. Secure in power as 
he was, he sought for no more victims, and acted with 
conspicuous moderation and prudence. The great his¬ 
torian Gibbon describes him as having “a cool head, an 
unfeeling heart, and a cowardly disposition,” and as 
wearing throughout his life the mask of hypocrisy. The 
truth seems to be that he was a man who, with no innate 
cruelty, and with a perfect self-command, adapted means 
to ends throughout his career, and, filled with “an aus¬ 
tere and passionless ambition,” struck down his enemies 
with pitiless severity when he deemed it needful for his 
safety, and, once safe, sheathed the no longer needed 
sword forevermore. In B. C. 27 the Senate conferred 
upon Octavianus for ten years the Imperatorship, which 
was the symbol of absolute power, and saluted him with 
the title of “Augustus,” by which name he is best known 
in history. 

“The Latin literature of the Republican period which 
has come down to us (Macaulay’s Lays, Preface) consists 
almost exclusively of works fashioned on Greek models. 
The Latin meters, heroic, elegiac, lyric, and dramatic, 
are of Greek origin. The best Latin epic poetry is the 
feeble echo of the Iliad and Odyssey. The best Latin 
eclogues are imitations of Theocritus. The plan of the 
most finished didactic poem (the Georgies) in the Latin 
tongue was taken from Hesiod. The Latin tragedies 
are bad copies of the masterpieces of Sophocles and 
Euripides. The Latin comedies are free translations 
from Demophilus, Menander, and Apollodorus. The 
Latin philosophy was borrowed without alteration from 


252 ANCIENT AND MEDIEVAL HISTORY 

the ‘Portico’ and the ‘Academy/ and the great Latin 
orators constantly proposed to themselves as patterns 
the speeches of Demosthenes and Lysias.” 

Macaulay observes: “Satire is the only sort of com¬ 
position in which the Latin poets, whose works have 
come down to ns, were not mere imitators of foreign 
models; and it is therefore the only sort of composition 
in which they have never been rivaled.” Satire sprang, in 
truth, naturally from the Constitution of the Roman 
Government, and from the spirit of the Roman people.” 
The origin of the Satire (a word meaning “mixture” 
or “medley”) was the Fescennine Songs (a name derived 
from an Etruscan town), a rude style of extempore dia¬ 
logues, in which the country people “chaffed” each other 
at their festivals. The founder of Roman satire, as a 
poetical composition, is held to have been Lucilius (B. C. 
149-103), who wrote in rough-and-ready hexameter 
verses against the vices and follies both of individuals and 
of mankind at large. The fragments which remain of 
his writings show’ a coarse and stinging pleasantry and 
personality. No other Roman satirists occur till the 
period of the Empire. 

Among the greatest of Roman poets w r as Lucretius 
(B. C. 96-52). He has left a philosophical poem in hexa¬ 
meter verse, called De Rerum Natura (“on the nature of 
things”), in which he maintains the “atomic theory” of 
the origin of the universe. The work is admitted to be 
the greatest of all didactic poems for the clearness and 
stateliness of its style and the beauty and power of its 
descriptions and episodes. It is a truly grand and orig¬ 
inal effort of Roman literary genius. Another great 
Roman poet w r as Catullus (B. C. 82 to about 40). His 
w r ritings are lyrical, elegiac, and epigrammatic, partly 
imitated from the Greek, but adorned with much orig- 


HISTORY OF ROME 


253 


inality and grace of invention and expression. One 
poem, called “Atys,” on a Greek myth of a shepherd 
beloved by the goddess Cybele, is full of passion and 
power. 

Varro (B. C. 116-28) was the most learned man of 
Republican Rome. Caesar employed him to superin¬ 
tend the collection and arrangement of the great public 
library which he instituted. Only two of his very num¬ 
erous works are extant, and one only in a perfect form—* 
a work on agriculture, the other being a treatise on the 
Latin language, which has preserved much valuable in¬ 
formation on Roman usages. Sallust (B. C. 86-34) is 
well known for his two vigorous historical treatises on 
the Jugurthine War and Catiline’s Conspiracy. Cicero 
(B. C. 107-43) is renowned as an orator, essayist, and 
letter-writer, his style being esteemed the perfection of 
Latin prose. At his favorite villa (country-house) at 
Tusculum, a few miles distant from Rome, he received 
his literary friends, and had a splendid library, constantly 
enlarged by the labors of the Greek slaves whom he 
employed as copyists of the works of the Greek writers. 

Oratory was one of the chief pursuits of educated 
Romans. Antonius “the orator” (B. C. 143-87) is 
named by Cicero as one of the most distinguished speak¬ 
ers of that earlier time. Hortensius (B. C. 114-50) was 
the greatest orator of his day until Cicero surpassed him, 
and was noted for his florid style and graceful and elab¬ 
orate gestures. 


ROME AS AN EMPIRE 


The system of rule established by Augustus Caesar, 
when he became master of the Roman world at the age of 
thirty-six (in B. C. 27), was such as accorded with the 
prudence and moderation of his character. As Gibbon 
says: “He was sensible that mankind is governed by 
names, and expected, as he found, that the Senate and 
people would submit to slavery, provided they were 
respectfully assured that they still enjoyed their ancient 
freedom. ,, Accordingly, the Republican offices were 
still retained, but the one person who was invested with 
them all, or who dictated the election to them all, was 
the Imperator, the head of the State. His power was 
secured by the military establishment, of which he was 
the permanent head; to him every soldier swore personal 
fidelity; by him every officer was directly appointed. The 
legionaries and the aristocracy were thus alike devoted 
to his will “by the restraints of discipline, the allurements 
of honor, and the ideas of military devotion.” The im¬ 
perial system was, in fact, a military despotism under 
Republican forms, the names of the ancient free State 
being retained as a veil to cover the fact of autocratic 
rule. 

The provinces were divided, as to their administra¬ 
tion, between the Senate and the Emperor, in such a 
manner that those in which regular armies were stationed 
belonged to Augustus, while the rest were assigned to 
the Senate and the people. The Governors of the Sena¬ 
torial provinces held their office, according to the ancient 
custom, only for one year, while the Lieutenant-Gov- 


254 


HISTORY OF ROME 


255 


ernors appointed by the Emperor kept their posts for 
various terms. The dignity of the Senate was outwardly 
maintained by a deference to its decision on the most 
important question of peace and war; in civil and crim¬ 
inal matters it was the highest judicial court; in legisla¬ 
tion it was held to be supreme as representing the 
Roman people. The debates were conducted with much 
show of freedom, and the Emperor sat and voted as a 
Senator among his equals, or, at the most, as a leader in 
the Assembly. No outward show, as of sovereignty, 
was assumed by the real ruler of the State; and in this 
way all popular jealousy as to “kingship,” which was so 
hateful an idea to Romans, was avoided. 

The boundaries of the Roman Empire in the time of 
Augustus were as follows: On the north the English 
Channel, the Rhine, the Danube (Ister), and the Black 
Sea; on the east the Euphrates and the Syrian Desert; 
on the south the great African Desert (the Sahara), and 
on the west the Atlantic Ocean. In round numbers, 
this great dominion was about 2,700 miles from east to 
west, with an average breadth of 1,000 miles. A great 
military force was kept on the frontiers at the Rhine, the 
Danube, and in Syria, and the commerce of the Medi¬ 
terranean was protected by two permanent fleets, with 
stations at Ravenna on the Adriatic, and at Misenum in 
the Bay of Naples. The imposing size of the Roman 
Empire is seen at once by a mention of the modern coun¬ 
tries whose territory it included at this time, these being 
—Portugal, Spain, France, Belgium, part of Holland, 
Rhenish Prussia, parts of Bavaria, Baden, and Wiirtem- 
berg, Switzerland, Italy, the Tyrol, Austria proper, part 
of Hungary, Croatia, Slavonia, Servia, Turkey in 
Europe, Greece, Asia Minor, Syria, Palestine, Egypt, 
Tripoli, Tunis, Algeria, and most of Morocco. The 


256 ANCIENT AND MEDIAEVAL HISTORY 

population of the Empire under Augustus is supposed to 
have been about one hundred millions, of whom one-half 
were slaves. 

In this view we have the Western (or European) 
provinces, the Eastern (or Asiatic), and the Southern (or 
African). In the west, the civilization became mainly 
Roman, so that in Gaul, Spain, and Africa the Latin 
language and Roman customs were adopted. In the 
east, from the Adriatic Sea to Mount Taurus (in south¬ 
east of Asia Minor), the civilization remained Greek in 
language and manners. In the east, beyond Mount 
Taurus, and southward to and including Egypt, the civ¬ 
ilization remained largely Oriental, though at Alex¬ 
andria and some other great cities the Greek language 
and culture had become established by the Macedonian 
conquest. 

Of this vast empire the capital was Rome, the popula¬ 
tion of which may have been a million and a half. It 
was after the conquest of Carthage and of Greece that 
Rome began to be truly splendid in its public buildings 
and private houses, and very great additions and im¬ 
provements were made under Augustus. The city had 
long since extended beyond the ancient walls, and was 
practically unfortified. Augustus divided the whole 
city, for purposes of police, into fourteen districts 
(Regiones), containing two classes of dwellings, called 
domus (“mansions") and insulae ("literally islands, mean¬ 
ing here, detached piles of buildings, or blocks). The 
domus were the abodes of the nobles, and the insulae were 
divided into sets of apartments and single rooms, as the 
dwellings of the middle and the lower classes. 

The successors of Augustus added largely to the 
number. The magnificence of the city in imperial times 
can best be described by mentioning Fora (paved spaces 


HISTORY OF ROME 


257 


surrounded by buildings), Campi (recreation grounds, 
like our parks), temples (by hundreds, including the 
small shrines), theaters, amphitheaters, Thermae (large 
and splendid buildings, which included baths, gymnastic 
grounds, porticoes for loungers, libraries, sculptures, 
fountains, and shady walks), triumphal arches, Curiae 
(or Senate houses), Castra (or barracks), palaces, Horti 
(public or private gardens, adorned with works of art), 
mausoleums, columns, and obelisks. 

The period of Augustus is the most brilliant in the 
history of Roman literature, whether as regards poetry 
or prose. Hence, from being originally applied to this 
period, “Augustan age” has come to be a proverbial 
expression for a period of literary fruitfulness and vigor 
in the history of any civilized country. Augustus him¬ 
self was a liberal patron of literary men, and his age has 
been made illustrious by the number and eminence of 
the writers who appeared in it. 

Virgil’s name alone is sufficient to crown the Augus¬ 
tan age with greatness. He was the first of the famous 
Latin poets, the greatest in the history of Rome and 
admittedly one of the half dozen greatest the world has 
seen. Publius Vergilus Maro was his name, and he was 
born near Mantua, in Cisalpine Gaul, and lived from B. C. 
70 to 19. His father was a moderately wealthy farmer, 
who was rich enough to send his son to Rome, where 
he studied rhetoric and philosophy under the best teach¬ 
ers of his time. Virgil’s farm was confiscated during the 
civil wars of the period, but his rising fame as a poet 
brought him to the attention of the Governor of hi 5 
Province, and afterward to that of the powerful Minister, 
Maecenas, who added him to the circle of court poets 
which made the age famous. His eclogues, or pastoral 
poems, published in B. C. 37, were received with enthusi- 


258 ANCIENT AND MEDIAEVAL HISTORY 

f 

asm. Maecenas gave him a villa near Naples and a 
country house near Nola, where he lived seven years and 
composed the Georgies, or Art of Husbandry, a poem 
in four books, which deals with tillage and pasturage, 
the breeding of horses and cattle, and other bucolic sub¬ 
jects, but which, on their appearance in B. C. 30, for their 
poetic merit made him admittedly by his contemporaries 
the greatest poet of his day. The remaining eleven 
years of his life were devoted to the writing of the ^Eneid, 
the famous national epic of the Romans, which described 
the wanderings of yEneas, the Trojan, the legendary 
founder of the Roman Nation and the Julian family, 
from the fall of Troy to his arrival in Italy, his wars and 
alliances with the native Italian races, and his final estab¬ 
lishment of his new kingdom. Virgil spent three years 
in revising the yEneid, and at his death ordered that it be 
burnt, because it had not been polished sufficiently. But 
Augustus refused, and it was published as we now know 
it. Virgil was shy, silent, and reserved in manner, and 
was never married. His sincerity and sweetness of 
temper won even the praise of Horace, who is not lavish 
of praise; and the fastidious purity of his life in an age 
of very lax morality gained him the name of “lady.” 
The supremacy of Virgil in Latin poetry was immediate 
and almost unquestioned. His works became classics 
among his countrymen and have been studied in the 
schools in all Europe since as models of Latin style. 
Critics say that the Georgies are his greatest poems, be¬ 
cause of their elegant finish and masterly verse. The 
yEneid has passages of equal grace, but is more uneven. 
His dramatic power, finished beauty of language, and his 
imaginative insight, with his intricate and rich harmonies, 
have given his work a secure place in literature, where it 
ranks as one of th^ ereatest nam*s. All other Latin 


HISTORY OF ROME 


2 59 

poetry is estimated by the degree in which it falls short 
of his. 

Horace wooed the lyric muse in his verse. He was 
born at Venusia, in Apulia, and lived from B. C. 65 to 8. 
He went to school at Rome and afterward at Athens, 
but losing his property was forced to write verses, as 
he says, for a living. His earliest were chiefly satires 
and personal lampoons, but it was probably through 
some of his first lyrics that he became known to Virgil, 
who introduced him to Maecenas, to whose gift Horace 
owed the celebrated farm among the Sabine hills. Hor¬ 
ace was the poet-laureate of his age, and wrote odes to 
order in honor of various events. His Epistles are dis¬ 
tinguished for grace, ease, good sense, and wit. His 
Satires, his earliest publication, which appeared about 
35 B. C., are satires more of manners and follies than 
of vice or impiety. Horace was always a man of the 
world, as was shown clearly in his Odes, his greatest 
work, which appeared in B. C. 19, when he was forty-six 
years of age. These are terse, melodious, and exquisite 
in finish—the delight of scholars in all ages. Horace’s 
historical position in Latin literature is this: On the 
one hand he carried on and perfected the native Roman 
growth and satire from the ruder essays of Lucilius, so 
to make Roman life live anew under his pen; and on the 
other hand he naturalized the meters and manners of 
the Greek lyric poets. His poems are of great value as 
a picture of life during his times. 

Tibullus (lived from about B. C. 55 to 18) has left 
some books of elegiac poems distinguished by pure taste 
and graceful language. Propertius (B. C. 51-16) left 
elegiac poems of considerable beauty and power, ranked 
bv the ancient critics with those of Tibullus. 

Ovid’s poems are marked by richness of fancy and by 


26o ANCIENT AND MEDIEVAL HISTORY 


variety and beauty of phrase. His Latin name was Pub¬ 
lius Ovidius Naso. He was born at Sulmo, in the coun¬ 
try of the Peligni (a tribe in Central Italy), and lived 
from B. C. 43 to A. D. 18. His Metamorphoses are 
legends or fables on heaven-wrought “transformations” 
of men and women, in the mythical age, into other crea¬ 
tures; the Fasti is a sort of calendar in verse, introducing 
the Roman festivals and the mythological origin of the 
same. His amatory poems (Amores, or “loves,” Ars 
Amatoria, or “Art of Love,” and Remedia Amoris, or 
“Remedies for Love”) are clever and licentious; the 
Epistolae Heroidum (“Letters of the Heroines”) are let¬ 
ters in verse, purporting to have been written to absent 
lovers or husbands by women famous in olden legend. 
Phsedrus is believed to have been a freedman of Augus¬ 
tus, and has left, in iambic verse, Latin adaptations of 
the Greek HIsop’s Fables, expressed with clearness and 
conciseness. 

The historian Livy (in Latin, Titus Livius) was born 
at Patavium (now Padua), and lived from B. C. 59 to 

A. D. 17. He wrote a history of Rome from the founda¬ 
tion of the city to B. C. 9, in 142 books, of which 35 
have come down to our time. The “lost books of Livy” 
is an expression which testifies to the regret of the mod¬ 
erns for perished treasures, leaving one of the greatest 
gaps in the literature of the world. The existing books 
are: I-X, giving the history from Rome’s foundation to 

B. C. 294; XXI-XXX, giving the history from B. C. 
219 to 201, and including, happily, the Second Punic 
War; XXXI-XLV, containing the history from B. C. 
201 to 167, and including Roman wars in Cisalpine Gaul, 
Macedonia, Greece, and Asia Minor. As a critical his¬ 
torian, in the modern sense of one who tests authorities 
and aims at the transmission of indubitable fact, so far as 


HISTORY OF ROME 


261 


ne can ascertain it, Livy is lacking; as a writer of his¬ 
torical narrative he stands among the foremost mas¬ 
ters of style in the world—becoming, as occasion re¬ 
quires, simple, rich, picturesque, and vh id, and remain¬ 
ing always calm, clear, and strong. 

Velleius Paterculus (lived about B. C. 19 to A. D. 
31) wrote (in a clear, concise, and vigorous style, much 
like that of Sallust) a compendium of universal history* 
chiefly as connected with Rome. Seneca, the philos¬ 
opher (Lucius Annseus Seneca), was born about B. C. 5, 
at Corduba (Cordova), in Spain, and lived till A. D. 65. 
He was first tutor, and afterward one of the chief Minis¬ 
ters of the Emperor Nero, but being accused of conspir¬ 
ing against the tyrant he was sentenced to death, and 
was forced to commit suicide. The writings of Seneca 
(a Stoic philosopher) are chiefly moral treatises con¬ 
taining much good, sound thought, clearly and vigor¬ 
ously expressed. He has left also ten tragedies, mostly 
on Greek mythological subjects. 

Pliny the Elder (Caius Plinius Secundus) lived from 
A. D. 23 to 79, and has left a voluminous work called 
Historia Naturalis (“Natural History”), which, besides 
treating of natural history proper, deals also with geog¬ 
raphy, astronomy, human inventions, and institutions, 
the fine arts, etc., furnishing a wonderful but ill-digested 
and uncritical proof of his industry and learning. This 
enthusiastic scholar died by suffocation from poisonous 
gases emitted in the first recorded eruption of Mount 
Vesuvius (A. D. 79, as above), having too closely ap¬ 
proached the scene of action in his eagerness for observa¬ 
tion. He was at the time in command of the Roman 
fleet stationed at Misenum. 

This eruption was the one which buried the city of 
Herculaneum (from jo to 100 feet deep) under showers 


262 ANCIENT AND MEDIAEVAL HISTORY 


of ashes, sand, and rock. It has been partially exca¬ 
vated, having been accidentally discovered in A. D. 1720 
by the sinking of a well. At the sam*- rime the city oi 
Pompeii was overwhelmed by ashes, over which a soil 
was gradually formed, and the excavations made since 
A. D. 1721 have uncovered about half the place, and 
revealed most valuable and interesting facts as to ancient 
Roman life. 

Persius, born in Etruria, lived from A. D. 34 to 62, 
and has left six short Satires in verse, remarkable for 
their difficulty, and containing some fine passages. 
Lucan (in Latin, Marcus Annaeus Lucanus) was born at 
Corduba (Cordova), in Spain, and lived from A. D. 39 
to 65. He wrote the famous extant heroic poem called 
Pharsalia, giving an account of the struggle between 
Julius Caesar and Pompey. This is an unequal work, 
having finely imaginative and vigorous passages, with 
much that is overwrought and inartistic. Martial (Mar¬ 
cus Valerius Martialis) was born in Spain, and lived from 
A. D. 43 to about 105. He is the well-known writer of 
epigrams (short, witty poems), of which we have four¬ 
teen books, and has never been surpassed in that style 
for wit and happiness of expression. 

Pliny the Younger (Cains Plinius Ccecilius Secundus, 
nephew of the elder Pliny) was born in Cisalpine Gaul, 
and lived from A. D. 61 till after 115. He has left ten 
books of interesting and valuable letters, including two of 
great celebrity (one addressed by Pliny to the Emperor 
Trajan, the other, Trajan’s reply), concerning the con¬ 
duct of the early Christians and their treatment by the 
Roman civil magistrates. Quintilian (Marcus Fabius 
Quintilianus) (42-120) born in Spain, left a famous work 
on rhetoric, which contains the opinions of a most accom¬ 
plished instructor on the proper training for the art of 


HISTORY OF ROME 263 

oratory in its highest development. The matter and style 
of this great treatise are alike admirable. 

Two of the greatest writers, not only in Roman, but 
in any literature, were, first, the renowned satirist Juve¬ 
nal (Decimus Junius Juvenalis), who wrote about A. D. 
80-100, and has left sixteen satires in verse (if the last 
fragmentary one be really his), aimed mainly at the 
grosser vices of his day. The Sixth Satire (against the 
Roman ladies, then shockingly depraved) and the Tenth 
(on the vanity of human wishes) are the most vigorous 
of this powerful writer’s denunciations. The second, 
the historian Tacitus (Caius Cornelius Tacitus), who 
lived from about 55 to 117. Distinguished in his own 
day as an orator, and will be ever famous as a historian 
of peculiar powers of perception and expression. His 
insinuation of motives for the human actions which he 
records is impressive and masterly; his method of using 
the Latin tongue gives it a wonderful power for com¬ 
pression of much meaning into few words. His extant 
works are : A life of Agricola, his father-in-law, Roman 
Governor of Britain, one of the finest biographies ever 
written; four books of Histories (part of a larger work), 
giving an account of the important events which oc¬ 
curred in A. D. 69, 70; some books of his greatest work, 
the Annals, which contained the history of the Empire 
from A. D. 14 to 68, and a treatise on the Germanic 
Nations. 

Suetonius, the historian, lived from about A. D. 72 
to 140, and has left (besides some minor works of a bio¬ 
graphical nature) a valuable book called “Lives of the 
Twelve Gesars,” including Julius Gesar and Domitian; 
it is the matter, not the style, which makes the work 
precious. 

Under the rule of Augustus the greatest event of the 


264 ANCIENT AND MEDI/EVAL HISTORT 


world’s spiritual history occurred in Bethlehem of Judaea 
—the birth of Jesus Christ. This really took place in 
the year 4 B. C., but the erroneous calculation has, for 
the sake of convenience, been allowed to stand, and the 
chronology passes from B. C. (“before Christ ’) to A. D. 
(anno Domini, “in the year of the Lord”), when Augus¬ 
tus had held sway, according to the wrong reckoning, 
for twenty-seven years. 

The great secular fact of Rome’s history under 
Augustus Caesar was the destruction of the Roman Gen¬ 
eral, Varus, and his legions by the celebrated Arminius 
in Germany. Arminius is the Latin form of the Teu¬ 
tonic Herman, the great National hero in whose honor a 
colossal statue has been erected in the northwest part 
of Germany, near the scene of his patriotic and mo¬ 
mentous achievement—one which decisively affected the 
whole future of the world’s history. He was the chief of 
the Cherusci, a powerful tribe dwelling on both sides of 
the River Visurgis (Weser), and closely akin in race to the 
Angles and Saxons who conquered England, and gave 
to Englishmen their being, their language, their free 
spirit, and the germ of the laws and institutions which 
they enjoy. If Arminius had not done what he did 
against Rome, Germany might have been thoroughly 
subdued; the Latin language might have extinguished 
the Teutonic as it had the Gallic and the Spanish; the 
Teutonic tribes might have been overwhelmed; the Teu¬ 
tonic influence in molding modern Europe, in creating 
the English race, might never have been exerted, and it 
is clear that Europe and the world would have had a 
widely different development from that which they have 
actually undergone. 

To Arminius belongs the glory of successfully defy¬ 
ing the power to which Hannibal in Africa, Mithridates 




lELO'R, PlNX 

















HISTORY OF ROME 


265 

in Asia, and Vercingetorix in Gaul, had finally and disas¬ 
trously succumbed. Under the rule of Augustus the 
Roman arms had been extending the dominion of the 
all-conquering Empire. The north of Spain had been 
subdued; the Roman frontier had been pushed from the 
Alps to the Danube, and much of southern Germany had 
been annexed. The Roman eagles had been carried 
even to the Elbe, and it seemed that the Germanic tribes, 
who had, under the Republic, threatened the very exist¬ 
ence of Rome, were now, under the Empire, to be de¬ 
prived of freedom, fame, and future. The contest, how¬ 
ever, was really one between Rome in her decline and 
Germany in her rude and ancient best, when to courage 
she added truthfulness, to truthfulness a manly inde¬ 
pendence and a love of freedom, and to these a purity of 
life, a practice of domestic virtues, which had become 
rare indeed in Rome degenerate and decayed. Armin- 
ius, as chief of the Cherusci, headed a confederacy of 
German tribes who were determined, if they could, to 
expel from northern Germany the invaders and partial 
conquerors of the Fatherland. The Roman Governor, 
Quintilius Varus, and his officers and troops, had pro¬ 
voked the German outbreak by their licentious behavior 
toward German women, and the vengeance wreaked on 
the offenders was complete in itself, and effectual for 
the preservation of German freedom against the future 
efforts of Roman armies. The German hero, when his 
plans were formed, tempted Varus and his three legions 
by a revolt of the tribes near the Weser and the Ems to 
march into the difficult country now called the Teuto- 
burger Wald, a woody and hilly region near the sources 
of the Lippe and the Ems. When the Roman force was 
thoroughly entangled amidst the forests, glens, and hills, 
and had been further imperiled by the rashness of Va- 


266 ANCIENT AND MEDIAEVAL HISTORY 


rus (who was as incompetent in military command as he 
was insolent and oppressive in his rule) as to his order of 
march—then, and not till then, Arminius and his Ger¬ 
mans fell on the hated foe. Front, flanks, and rear were 
assailed at once with fierce shouts, thick-hurled darts, 
and broadswords keen of edge. The Roman column 
was pierced and disarranged; the Roman cavalry fled, 
but was pursued and utterly destroyed. Varus slew him¬ 
self in despair. The infantry of Rome, still steady, stub¬ 
born, disciplined, and brave, was overpowered and slain 
almost to the last man. All efforts of Rome thereafter 
never gave her a secure and permanent foothold on Ger¬ 
man soil. This great deliverance of Germany, so 
momentous in European history, was wrought in A. D. 
9. Augustus, cool and impassive as he was, was often 
heard to wail aloud for his lost legions, and Roman 
dominion in this quarter was henceforth virtually 
bounded by the Rhine until the time came when Ger¬ 
mans were, with their conquering swords, to aid in carv¬ 
ing the provinces of imperial Rome into the kingdoms 
of modern Europe. 

Augustus died in A. D. 14, leaving behind him, as 
the result of his efforts dealing with the materials be¬ 
queathed to him by Julius Caesar, an Empire thoroughly 
organized on a system of centralization, having a vast 
standing army, a host of officials, a uniform taxation; an 
Empire in which the old Roman liberty had withered 
away and been replaced by servility and stoicism. The 
imperial system was, in fact, a concentration of military 
force for the defense of the Empire against foreign foes, 
and the benefit conferred by it was that for two cen¬ 
turies the world was in the main at peace. If republican 
liberty was extinguished, material happiness was in- 


HISTORY OF ROME 


267 


creased. The chief fact of the time is that freedom was 
dead, and for several centuries Europe became like a 
scene of Asiatic despotism. That effeminacy came upon 
men which always infects them when they live for a long 
time under the rule of an all-powerful soldiery. 

Such was the material upon which Christianity was 
jin due time to work with its transforming and trans¬ 
cendent influence and power. 

During the period after Augustus, the Roman Empire, 
in spite of some rebellions of conquered nationalities, and 
contests between rival claimants of the imperial power, 
was mainly in a condition of peace and material prosper¬ 
ity. The frontier of the Roman dominion was not only 
maintained against the attacks of barbarians, but was at 
some points greatly, if transiently, extended. In the west, 
in Gaul and Spain, the Roman civilization wis thoroughly 
established. In the center and east of the Mediterranean 
shores in Europe the Greek language and culture were 
supreme, and Greek philosophy was the religion of the 
cultivated classes at Rome. I11 the Asiatic part of the 
Empire the Oriental ways of thought were preserved, and 
the East in the end gave a religion to its conquerors and 
masters. The political distinction of the Roman citizen¬ 
ship was still existent, and the Empire might fairly be 
called “Roman” in the old sense, though the provincials 
were more and more freely admitted to the possession of 
the coveted honor of being “cives Romani.” The Senate 
was still invested with an outward dignity, being com¬ 
posed, in the latter part of this period, of distinguished 
men chosen by the Emperor from the whole Empire, and 
resident in Italy for the purpose of engaging in actual, if 
formal, deliberations. The best of the Emperors during 
this period, however absolute their actual power might 


268 ANCIENT AND MEDIAEVAL HISTORY 


be, assumed only the character of life-presidents of the 
body whose cooperation in government they sought and 
encouraged. 

The “Claudian Emperors” derive their name from 
Tiberius, adopted son and successor of Augustus, belong¬ 
ing to the noble family of the Claudii, and owing his 
power to being recognized by the Senate as the appropriate 
possessor of the imperial dignity. The name of “Caesar” 
became soon a species of title attached as a surname to all 
the holders of imperial power, being in the four earlier 
instances acquired under the law of adoption. The Claud¬ 
ian Emperors were four in number—Tiberius (ruled A. 
D. 14-37), Caligula (37-41), Claudius (41-54), and Nero 
(54-68), in whom the family of the great Julius Caesar 
became extinct. 

Of these, Tiberius had shown himself an able general 
during the rule of Augustus. As Emperor he was a 
gloomy, suspicious, hypocritical, lustful, and in every way 
hateful tyrant, whose character has been drawn with con¬ 
summate skill and branded with ineffaceable infamy by 
the historian Tactitus. A reign of terror existed for all citi¬ 
zens who were conspicuous in ability or virtue, while a host 
of informers used an elastic law of treason for their 
destruction at the prompting of the Emperor. His wicked 
minister, Sejanus, commander of the Praetorian Guards, 
was put to death in 31. Tiberius lived the last ten years 
of his life at the island of Capreae (Capri), on the coast of 
Campania, and was then murdered by smothering almost 
as he drew the last breath of old age and disease. 

Caligula was a madman of a wicked and malignant 
type, and was murdered by a Tribune. Claudius was a 
weak ruler. Plis wife, Messalina, is proverbial for immor¬ 
ality. In his reign the conquest of Britain was begun 
(A. D. 43). 


HISTORY OP ROME 


269 


Nero was a monster of vice and tyranny. In his reign 
the British insurrection under Boadicea took place. He 
was at last deposed by the Senate, and died by his own 
hand. Among the crimes of Nero were the murder of his 
mother, Agrippina, and the persecution of the Christians 
in Rome on the false charge of causing the great fire there 
in A. D. 65. Claudius had been really made Emperor by 
the choice of the soldiers, which the Senate confirmed, 
and this evil precedent was often followed afterward. The 
rule of the empire was sometimes at the disposal of the 
famous “Praetorian Guard,” the headquarters in Rome of 
the military force, and the armies also in different parts 
of the Empire chose their own Generals as Emperors in 
the two years of confusion that succeeded the suicide of 
Nero in A. D. 68. 

The disorders of these calamitous years arose from a 
cause to which the military system and vast extension of 
the Empire rendered it peculiarly liable—the rebellion of 
great officers and viceroys entrusted with the defense of 
the frontier. The Legati (lieutenant-governors, with full 
military and civil control) of the Rhine, of the Danube, 
and of Syria, held the power of independent sovereigns, 
and under weak Emperors or in case of disputed succes¬ 
sion to the supreme sway, were tempted to revolt. 

Thus in A. D. 68, Galba, Governor of Spain, revolted 
against Nero, and on his arrival at Rome, after Nero’s 
death, was acknowledged as Emperor. Galba had been 
an able and successful Governor in Gaul and in Africa, 
but his day was now done (at seventy-one years of age), 
and, becoming unpopular with his troops through his 
severity and avarice, and with the people from the doings 
of unworthy favorites, he was murdered (January, 69) 
in a military rebellion under Otho, who had been a vicious 
adherent of Nero's. 


I 


270 ANCIENT AND MEDIAEVAL HISTORY 

Otho thus became Emperor for three months. At this 
very time Vitellius, noted for nothing but his gluttony, 
being Governor in part of Germany, was proclaimed 
Emperor by his soldiers at Colonia Agrippinensis 
(Cologne). His generals, Valens and Csecina, marched 
into Italy and defeated Otho at Bedriacum in Cisalpine 
Gaul (between Cremona and Verona). Otho killed him¬ 
self, and Vitellius reached Rome and was accepted as 
Emperor in July, 69. Meanwhile, early in the same 
month, Vespasianus, Commander of the Roman army in 
Judaea, was proclaimed Emperor at Alexandria, and 
acknowledged throughout the East, his cause being also 
supported by the army of the Danube. The troops of 
Vitellius were defeated in the north of Italy; the legions 
from Illyricum seized Rome for Vespasian; the Capitol 
was burnt in the civil war that raged in the city; the palace 
of Vitellius was stormed, and the Emperor dragged out, 
slain, and hurled into the Tiber. Amidst these horrors, 
Vespasian, to the joy of all good citizens, became Emperor 
of Rome, arriving at the city in A. D. 69. 

The Flavian Emperors, deriving their name from 
Flavius Vespasianus, were three in number—Vespasian, 
A. D. 69-79; Titus, 79-81, and Domitian, 81-96. 

Vespasian was a man of high character, whose rule 
was an unmixed blessing to the Empire. Born in a low 
class, of the fine old Sabine stock, he had the abilities and 
virtues of a Roman of the antique type—skill and bravery 
in war, strictness of rule, simplicity and frugality of life, 
moderation and dignity of character. The chief event of 
his reign was the complete suppression of the Jewish 
revolt (begun in 66) in the capture and destruction of 
Jerusalem by his son Titus, A. D. 70. The dreadful inci¬ 
dents of the siege of Jerusalem are well known. The 
great eruption of Vesuvius, A. D. 79, causing the destruc- 


HISTORY OF ROME 


271 


fcion of the towns of Herculaneum, Pompeii, and Stabile, 
near the foot of the mountain, occurred two months after 
the deatli of Vespasian, June, 79, who was succeeded by 
his elder son, Titus. His brief reign (two years) was 
marked by his care for the public good, and by the comple¬ 
tion of the great amphitheater called the Colosseum. 

Domitian, younger son of Vespasian, became a cruel 
tyrant, under whom the informers of the reign of Tiberius 
were again rampant with their false charges of treason. 
The conquest of Britain was completed in this reign by the 
great and good Agricola, and a new enemy for Rome 
appeared in the Dacians, dwelling to the north of the Dan¬ 
ube, in the territory now comprising Transylvania, Rou- 
mania, and part of Hungary. This warlike people had 
long troubled the Danubian frontier by their inroads, and 
in the years A. D. 86-90, under their King Decebalus, they 
had such success against the Roman armies that Domitian 
disgraced the Empire by consenting to pay tribute to Dacia 
for freedom from harassing attacks. Domitian was mur¬ 
dered by a conspiracy of court officials in 96. 

In the reigns of the live “good Emperors,” we come to 
the happiest time of Rome’s imperial sway. They suc¬ 
ceeded each other in adoption as sons by their predecessors. 

Nerva, 96-98, a cautious, feeble, humane, and virtuous 
man, reigned but fifteen months, wisely choosing an able 
and vigorous successor. 

Trajan, A. D. 98-117, reckoned the greatest of Roman 
Emperors, was born in Spain in A. D. 52, being the first 
foreigner that attained the imperial position. In physical 
strength and demeanor, moral excellence, and intellectual 
capacity, Trajan was thoroughly lit to rule. His suc¬ 
cesses in war extended the Roman dominion beyond all 
former limits. Between A. D. 100 and 106 Dacia was 
subdued and made a Roman province, the Column of 


272 ANCIENT AND MEDIAEVAL HISTORY 


Trajan at Rome being erected to commemorate the Emper¬ 
or’s victories in that quarter. Arabia Petnea was con¬ 
quered, Armenia and Parthia were humbled, and the Per¬ 
sian Gulf, for the first and last time in Rome’s history, was 
navigated by a Roman commander. 

Hadrian, A. D. 117-138, was an active ruler, who 
visited the various provinces of the Empire, in order to 
inspect their management and remedy disorders. I11 
Britain he erected the famous wall from the Solway Firth 
to the mouth of the Tyne. He was an excellent Greek 
scholar, residing for three years at Athens, and greatly 
favoring its people. He subdued the desperate revolt of 
the Tews. A. D. 131-136, under Barcochab, after which 
the great dispersion of the nation took place, and the city 
of Jerusalem was rebuilt as a Roman military colony under 
the name of SElia Capitolina. Hadrian did much for the 
administration of justice and for the science of jurispru¬ 
dence, in which the Romans were so great and so beneficial 
to future ages. A fixed code of laws, called the Edictum 
Perpetuum, “Permanent Decree,” founded on the decis' 
ions and rules of the judges, was drawn up by the eminent 
jurist Salvius Julianus, and promulgated by the Emperor. 

The last two of the “good Emperors” have given a 
name to the period called “the age of the Antonines,” in 
some respects the happiest time during the whole duration 
of the Roman Empire. Antoninus Pius, A. D. 138-161, 
was one of the best Princes, as a ruler and as a man, that 
ever governed a State. His life was perfectly pure, and 
all his powers were devoted to promoting the happiness of 
his subjects. Order and tranquillity reigned in his days. 

Marcus Aurelius, surnamed “the Philosopher,” and 
also called Antoninus, after his adoption by the preceding 
Emperor, reigned from A. D. 161 to 180. He was a man 
of spotless virtue, devoted to literature and philosophy, 


HISTORY OF ROME 


2 73 


and was the best product of Stoicism, to which he was a 
lifelong adherent. His “Meditations/’ written in the 
Greek tongue, is an extant work, registering his ideas and 
feelings on moral and religious points, and giving us the 
philosophy of heathenism in its noblest form. It was a 
little before this time that the great Stoic teacher Epictetus 
had put new life into that form of philosophy which he 
professed, as made known to us in the writings of his pupil 
Arrian, who was to him what Xenophon was to Socrates. 
In the reign of Aurelius the barbarian nations on the north¬ 
ern frontier of the Roman Empire began to be restless, 
and gave great trouble during most of his time. The 
Marcomannic War takes its name from the powerful peo¬ 
ple (Marcomanni, i. e., men of the march or border) in 
the territory now known as Bohemia and Bavaria. Along 
with other German tribes they fought the Romans with 
varying success, and Aurelius died in March, A. D. 180, 
in the midst of the struggle. 

The Slavonic tribes of the Northeast began to drive the 
Germans into Roman territory, where many of them were 
allowed to settle, or were taken into the Roman military 
service. The barbarizing of the Roman world had thus 
begun. In the time of Aurelius the Oriental plague 
appeared, A. D. 166, and scourged the Roman world from 
Persia to Gaul. A majority of the people is said to have 
been carried off, and this visitation was followed during 
the next century by many others of the same kind. 

The old beliefs of Rome were now in a declining state; 
the old ideas were growing constantly more obsolete; the 
old sacrifices were attended with constantly less devotion. 
The populace cared for nothing but to be fed by the fleets 
of corn-ships from Africa and Egypt, and to be amused 
with the cruel spectacles of the amphitheaters. The Greek 

author Lucian, born in Syria early in the Second Century, 
Voi,. i —18 


274 ANCIENT AND MEDIAEVAL HISTORY 

wrote under Aurelius, and in his amusing “Dialogues of 
the Gods” and other works pours contempt on the old 
theology, and aims at spreading universal scepticism. 
The attitude of the noble-minded Stoic, Aurelius himself, 
toward the ancient creed was that of entire disbelief in the 
heathen gods, while in his life and writings he cherished 
and practiced a piety worthy of a far different age. The 
most cultivated men of the time believed in the ancient 
gods as little as Aurelius himself did. 

The last “good Emperor,” Marcus Aurelius, was suc¬ 
ceeded by his son Commodus, A. D. 180-192. This man 
was a cruel and depraved wretch, a mere disgrace to 
human nature. In his time the Praetorian Guards assumed 
the full ascendency which they so long maintained. Corn- 
modus was poisoned by his favorite mistress, Martia, in 
192, and by her act the history of Rome passed into a new 
phase. 

An age of revolution now began, during which the 
imperial system was struggling for its life, and underwent 
a transformation which had important effects on its vital¬ 
ity for the rest of its career. The history of Europe pre¬ 
sents no more disastrous time than this Third Century 
of the Empire of Rome. We have a succession of tyran¬ 
nies, revolutions, and calamities, all of the worst kind— 
including the ravages of pestilence and the mischiefs 
wrought by a mutinous, omnipotent, and half-barbaric 
soldiery. Mention need only be made of a few of the 
more important persons and events. 

Septimius Severus, 191-211, gained victories over the 
Parthians in the East, and, having visited Britain in 208, 
fought against the Caledonians, and died at Eboracum 
(York). 

Caracalla, 211-217, son of Severus, was a savage 
tyrant, in whose reign the old political distinction between 


HISTORY OF ROME 


2 / o 


Romans and provincials wholly disappeared. All the 
free inhabitants of the Roman Empire were henceforth 
Roman citizens, and many of the best Emperors hereafter 
sprang from nations previously regarded as “barbarian.” 
Caracalla was murdered by his successor, Opilius (217), 
who, beheaded in a mutiny, was succeeded by 
Ileliogabalus. The latter is notorious as one of the 
most debauched men who ever lived, and he was put to 
death for his enormities. 

/ 

Alexander Severus, 222-235, was a just, wise, and 
virtuous ruler. The only important event during his 
reign is the disappearance of the Parthian Kingdom from 
history. A revolt of the Persians established the Persian 
Kingdom of the dynasty called the Sassanid;e, which 
reigned until A. D. 651. 

Maximinus, 235-238, was of Gothic parentage on his 
father's side, and had a German woman for his mother. 
At various times there were several so-called Emperors 
ruling at once in different parts of the Empire, sometimes 
acknowledged as colleagues by others, sometimes rival 
claimants for the supreme sway. The different armies, 
in all these cases, were the authorities appointing the ruler. 

I11 the reign of Decius, A. D. 249-251, the Goths 
appeared in force, and defeated and slew the Emperor. 
This powerful German people, destined to do much here¬ 
after in overthrowing the Empire of Rome, had migrated 
from the Baltic coasts to those of the Black Sea, and over¬ 
run a large part of the Roman province of Dacia. 

Under Valerian, A. D. 253-260, the Roman frontier 
was broken into at several points. The Franks (a con¬ 
federacy of German tribes on the Lower Rhine, replacing 
the league of the Cherusci of the time of Arminius), 
invaded Gaul; the Alemanni (another German confed¬ 
eracy of peoples between the Danube and the Rhine) were 


276 ANCIENT AND MEDIAEVAL HISTORY 

moving south and west; the Goths attacked Greece and 
Asia Minor. The Persians invaded Syria, and Valerian’s 
reign ended in his defeat and capture by the Persian King, 
Sapor, who skinned the Emperor alive. It seemed as if 
the Roman Empire would be broken up by outward force; 
but the end was not yet to be. 

A change came with the brilliant deeds of the brave 
Emperor Aurelian, 270-275, a Pannonian of low birth. 
He drove the Goths and Vandals (another German con¬ 
federacy of tribes) out of Pannonia (Modern Hungary 
and countries northeast of the Adriatic); he drove the 
Alemanni and other German invaders out of Italy; he 
recovered Gaul, Spain, and Britain from a rival claimant 
to the Empire. In order to secure the frontier on the 
Danube, Aurelian wisely surrendered Dacia to the Goths. 
In the East he defeated and brought captive to Rome the 
famous Zenobia, Queen of Palmyra, who was aiming at 
the sovereignty of the Eastern world. She had suc¬ 
ceeded to the power of her husband, Odenathus, who had 
driven the Persians out of Syria after the defeat of Val- 
erian, and had been allowed by the Emperor Gallienus, 
A. D. 260-268, to set up a “Kingdom of Palmyra.” At 
Zenobia’s court lived the famous Greek philosopher and 
grammarian Longinus, a man of great ability and exten¬ 
sive learning, still widely known by his admirable work 
“On the Sublime.” There were at this time thirty gen¬ 
erals who claimed the title of Emperor. 

The Emperor Probus, 276-282, also a native of Pan¬ 
nonia, did much glorious work in restoring the military 
supremacy of Rome. He put down rebellions, defeated 
the barbarians on the Danubian and Rhenish frontiers, and 
was at last killed by mutinous and dissolute troops, who 
objected to the useful labor imposed upon them in the 
public works. 


HISTORY OF ROME 


277 

The revolutionary period ended in the establishment 
of a new system of government, consisting in a division 
of the Empire, for administrative purposes, into four parts. 
This important change was made by Diocletian, a Dalma¬ 
tian of low rank, established as Emperor by the troops in 
A. D. 284. The adjustment which he made in the rela¬ 
tions between the Emperor and the Viceroys and the army 
saved the Empire from partition. Power in the purely 
military state which the Roman Empire had now become, 
was divided amongst four rulers. There was a co-Em- 
peror name Maximian, and in 292 a ruler, with the title 
of “Caesar/’ was appointed under each of the Emperors. 
The city of Rome lost its importance, as the four rulers 
resided mainly on the frontiers for purposes of defense 
against barbarian foes. Under this new arrangement, if 
one of the Emperors died he was to be succeeded by his 
subordinate “Caesar,” so as to deprive the army of the 
appointment of rulers. The Empire was now ruled from 
four centers—Nicomedia, in Bithynia (Asia Minor); 
Milan, in Italy; Antioch, in Syria; and Treves, or Trier, 
on the Moselle, in Gallia Belgica. After Diocletian, a firm 
and wise ruler, this arrangement did not work; but it 
paved the way for other improvements made by Constan¬ 
tine. 

At the end of the Third Century, by A. D. 300, great 
changes had passed over the Roman Empire. In popula¬ 
tion the Empire had become, to a large extent, barbarized; 
the armies contained great numbers of Goths, Vandals, and 
Sarmatians, a people in territory now the west and south 
of Russia. The Goths and Vandals were Germans, and 
Germans were the nationality that was spread through the 
Empire more than any other. The former distinction as 
to Roman citizenship had been lost, and that between the 


27S ANCIENT AND MEDIEVAL HISTORY 

“Roman legions” and the “allies’'* effaced, and the last visi¬ 
ble record of Rome’s conquest was obliterated. 

The political system of the Roman Empire had become 
half Oriental and half barbaric; and the great city of Rome 
itself, whence men had issued in olden time for the con¬ 
quest of the world, had become a provincial town on the 
banks of the Tiber. The Roman Senate, as a political 
body, as an organ of public opinion, practically disappears, 
and the Emperor becomes virtually a Sultan, ruling with 
thoroughly despotic power in the stately splendor of an 
Eastern Monarch. Human free-will vanishes away, and 
sovereignty becomes a thing regarded with awful rever¬ 
ence, a species of divinity, to which the subject yields, not 
only without resistance, but without a thought of opposi¬ 
tion to irresistible decrees. Eastern cruelty and disregard 
of human life become manifest, and the Emperor’s right 
of naming his successor had ruinous effects when that suc¬ 
cessor proved weak and incompetent for the vast burden 
of government laid upon his shoulders. From this prin¬ 
ciple of quasi-hereditary sovereignty, succeeded by the actu¬ 
ally hereditary development, Europe was to suffer at inter¬ 
vals, until the French Revolution taught the Continental 
world that Kings exist for Nations, and not Nations for 
Kings. In the later Roman Empire the evils of this state 
of political superstition and degradation, in which the sub¬ 
jects had no rights and the sovereign no responsibility, 
were often mitigated by the accession of really able and 
vigorous rulers. An enormous army of civil and military 
officials was spread over the Empire for administrative 
purposes, and extravagant expense led to oppressive taxa¬ 
tion, which ruined the people, and contributed to the down¬ 
fall of the whole system before the encroachments and 
assaults of barbarian nations. “Rome, the representative 
of European civilization, the inventor of civilized juris- 


HISTORY OF ROME 


279 

prudence, and the inheritor of Greek philosophy, 
descends to the level of an Asiatic state/’ 

The beneficent encroachments of Christianity were 
now to cause a change in men’s minds, an uprising and 
growth of new ideas, a vehemence of opinions, a con¬ 
flict of beliefs, and an outburst of enthusiasms, which 
revolutionized the spiritual world at the very time when 
mankind was politically dead. The Church had arisen 
within the State, and within this citadel, generally undis¬ 
turbed by the political despotism, civilization took ref¬ 
uge, and a large share of a new freedom for mankind 
was secured. An age of faith had come, and men were 
busied about the acceptance of new beliefs or the revival 
of old ones, in order to satisfy the cravings of awakened 
souls. 

Jesus Christ was crucified in the nineteenth year of 
the reign of Tiberius, A. D. 33. At Antioch, in Syria, 
where Paul and Barnabas taught the faith, the disciples 
were first, as a term of reproach, called “Christians.” 
St. Paul, in his journeys, carried the new religion 
through Asia Minor and Greece, and then to Rome, 
where he died in the reign of Nero. The Christian reli¬ 
gion was thus silently but surely spread, first among the 
Jews, then among the Greeks, or Eastern, and lastly 
among the Latin, or Western heathen. Nero was the 
first Roman Emperor who openly persecuted the Chris¬ 
tians, with whom the Jews were at first frequently con¬ 
founded. The reason why even good Emperors like 
Trajan and Aurelius harassed the Christians was that 
the religion of Rome was a part of the State system, 
and the denial of the Roman gods by the Christians was 
regarded as political hostility and disloyalty. The Chris¬ 
tians were a sect, and not a nation; and the Roman gov¬ 
ernment, which tolerated all national faiths, looked with 


28o ancient and mediaeval history 


suspicion on the votaries of a creed which had a new and 
unknown God, and taught that all other deities were 
non-existent or else powers of evil. 

Severe persecutions also occurred during the reigns 
of Decius and Valerian, and the struggle between the 
old faiths and the new culminated in the decree of 
Diocletian (A. D. 303), ordering the destruction of all 
Christian places of worship and of all the holy books, 
and the removal of all Christians from official posts of 
dignity and power. For eight years a cruel persecution 
raged throughout the Empire, except in Britain, Gaul, 
and Spain, but it ended in permission being given 
(A. D. 311) for the Christians to worship God as they 
pleased. Henceforward Christianity was safe from ex¬ 
ternal foes. 

Diocletian’s resignation of his power in A. D. 305 
was followed by a period of confusion and civil war, 
which ended in the establishment of Constantine as sole 
Emperor in A. D. 323. He was son of one of the co- 
Emperors and of a Christian woman named Helena. 
Constantine made an important change in the govern¬ 
ment of the Empire by dividing the military power from 
the civil authority. The influence of the Legati of pro¬ 
vincial viceroys was thus reduced, and the Emperor alone 
had both civil and military power in his hands, a fact 
which gave him a great predominance. 

In A. D. 324 Christianity was established by Con¬ 
stantine as the religion of the State, and in 330 he made 
Byzantium the capital of the Empire. This town, on the 
Thracian Bosporus, founded by Greek colonists in B. C. 
658, had early become a great commercial center. After 
being held successively by the Athenians, Lacedaemon¬ 
ians, and Macedonians, it came into Roman possession, 
and the new city now built there, or the enlarged and 



HUNS PLUNDERING A ROMAN VILLA 
Painting by C. Rochegrosse 












« 









* 



























































' 






} 

















HISTORY OF ROME 


381 

reconstructed Byzantium, was afterward called Con- 
stantinopolis (“City of Constantine,” from Greek polls, 
city), and remained the capital of the Eastern Empire 
of Rome till A. D. 1453. 

In religion, Constantine seems to have been a 
strange compound of Paganism and Christianity. He 
was an able general and statesman, whose real character 
has been obscured by historical excesses, both of pan¬ 
egyric and of detraction, and around whose name, in 
connection with Christianity, ridiculous fables have 
gathered. Constantine embraced the new religion be¬ 
cause he thought it expedient for his own interest so to 
do, and not from any miraculous apparition or divine 
command. He died in 337, leaving the Empire to con¬ 
fusion and civil war under his sons. 

Apart from its effects upon the morals, the new 
religion greatly and beneficially stirred the mind of the 
age. Political speculation and discussion were impos¬ 
sible under a despotism, and active minds turned to 
theology, and soon showed that the intellectual power 
of the time was to be found within the ranks of Chris¬ 
tianity. Amongst these early writers and rulers of the 
Church known as the “Christian Fathers’’ the following 
are the chief: Tertullian, Ambrose, Cyprian, Lactan- 
tius, Jerome and Augustine, being Latin Fathers; 
Origen, Gregory, Basil, Chrysostom, Athanasius, being 
Greek Fathers. 

Julian, surnamed the Apostate, or deserter from the 
faith, was Emperor from A. D. 360 to 363. He was a 
descendant of Constantine, and a man of great abilities 
and attainments, distinguished at Athens in the study 
of Greek literature and philosophy. He fought with 
great success, before he became Emperor, against the 
Franks and the Alemanni, German Confederacies who 


2S2 ANCIENT AND MEDIAEVAL HISTORY 


had invaded Gaul. Brought up as a Christian, he de¬ 
clared himself a Pagan when he was made Emperor by 
the troops in 360, and did what he could to root out 
Christianity. In 363 he invaded Persia, but was com¬ 
pelled to retreat by the climate and want of supplies, 
and being then attacked by the Persians, was killed in 
one of the battles that covered the Roman army’s retire¬ 
ment beyond the Euphrates. Julian was a man of ex¬ 
traordinary character: virtuous in life; energetic, just, 
and wise in administration; a diligent and thoughtful 
writer, who has left, in a pure Greek style, letters, ora¬ 
tions, and satirical works of considerable interest and 
humor. Christianity was restored by Jovian, his succes¬ 
sor. 

Under the joint Emperors Valentinian I and Yalens 
(364-375) the wars with the German barbarians contin¬ 
ued. Valentinian was an able and vigorous ruler and gen¬ 
eral, and drove the Alemanni out of Gaul, which they had 
again invaded. 

The Goths become at this time very prominent in 
the history of the decaying Empire of Rome. Of this 
great nation there were two divisions, the Ostrogoths, 
or Eastern Goths, and the Visigoths, or Western Goths. 
The nation as a whole extended through central Europe 
from the Baltic to the Black Sea. In the latter half of 
this Century there was a compact and powerful Gothic 
Kingdom, under a ruler named Hennanaric, extending 
over what is now Hungary and Poland. The Goths had 
to some extent become Christians through the teaching 
of their devoted countryman, Bishop Wulfilas, or 
Ulphilas, who appears to have also invented an alphabet 
for them, based upon the Greek alphabet. 

A most formidable Asiatic race had already made its 
appearance in Europe, moving westward from the Cas- 


HISTORY OF ROME 


283 

pian and the Ural Mountains with irresistible ferocity 
and strength. They were Tartars, originally coming 
from the northeast of Asia, where they had made inroads 
upon China. About A. D. 374 these Huns crossed the 
Volga and the Don, and fell upon the Gothic Kingdom. 
The Ostogoths partly submitted and partly sought a 
refuge among the Visigoths. 

By permission of Valens (Emperor of the eastern 
part of the Empire, A. D. 364-378), large numbers of 
Goths were allowed to settle south of the Danube. The 
newcomers soon attacked the Romans, and Valens 
was defeated and killed in a great battle near Adrianople 
in 378. This great settlement of Goths to the south 
of the Danube was a considerable step toward the 
breaking up of the Roman Empire. They spread them¬ 
selves westward to the Adriatic Sea and the borders 
of Italy, and, entering the Roman army and acquiring 
Roman civilization, became prepared to play their des¬ 
tined part in the coming change. 

Theodosius, who reigned over the whole Empire 
only from 392 to 395, being previously Emperor of the 
eastern division, restored matters for a time. He put 
down in battle the Goths who had entered the Empire, 
and made peace with them in 382. The rising power of 
the Christian Church was shown in the treatment of 
this Emperor by St. Ambrose, Bishop of Milan. Theo¬ 
dosius, in 390, had caused a cruel massacre of the people 
of Thessalonica, in Macedonia, in punishment for a riot¬ 
ous outbreak, and St. Ambrose induced him humbly and 
publicly to acknowledge his guilt. The formal end of 
Paganism took place at this time, in the decrees of Theo¬ 
dosius which prohibited, under severe penalties, the wor¬ 
ship of the old heathen gods. He was the last Emperor 
who ruled over the whole undivided Empire. 


DIVISION OF THE EMPIRE 


The Empire was now (A. D. 395) divided between 
the two sons of Theodosius, but its main defender 
against the barbarians was the brave and able Stilicho, 
a Vandal by birth, who was the real ruler of the Western 
Empire, comprising Italy, Africa, Spain, Gaul, and Brit¬ 
ain. The Eastern Empire has henceforth a career of 
its own, to be noticed hereafter, and we pursue the his¬ 
tory of the Western down to the time of its extinction. 
Stilicho maintained the northern frontier of Britain 
against the Piets and Scots, and the Rhine frontier 
of Gaul against the German tribes called Suevi and 
Alemanni. 

A formidable enemy now appears on the scene, 
Alaric, King of the Visigoths. Under him the Goths 
settled within the Danube had already overrun Mace¬ 
donia and Greece, and in A. D. 402 Alaric attacked 
Italy in great force. Stilicho hurried to the rescue, and 
drove out the Visigoths, gaining decisive victories in 
two desperate battles (403). After his general’s success 
Honorius, the Emperor, celebrated at Rome the last 
triumph ever seen there, the event being sung in stirring 
verse by Claudian, the last of the Latin classic poets, a 
writer of pure style and real genius. 

In A. D. 405 a leader named Radagaisus invaded 
Italy with a vast host of barbarians from the interior of 
Germany—Suevi and Alemanni, Alani and Vandals, 
Goths and Huns. At Faesuke, near Florence (in 406), 
Stilicho encountered and defeated the enemy. Stilicho 

2S4 


HISTORY OF ROME 2S5 

was put to death in 408 on a charge of aspiring to the 
Empire. 

In A. D. 408 Alaric came again into Italy, this time 
with an irresistible force, and after extorting an enor¬ 
mous ransom on condition of sparing Rome, captured 
the city in 410, and gave it up to a six days’ plunder by 
his warriors, without any cruel slaughter of the people. 
This was exactly 800 years after the taking of Rome 
by the Gauls under Brennus. Alaric died shortly after¬ 
ward. 

Early in the Fifth Century the Roman forces were 
withdrawn from Britain, which was left open to con¬ 
quest by the Angles and their kinsmen from northwest 
Germany. Soon after Alaric s time the Visigoths estab¬ 
lished themselves in the south of Gaul and the north 
of Spain, while hordes of Suevi and Alani, Vandals and 
Burgundians, a German nation akin to the Goths, 
swarmed over the rest of both those great provinces. 
In 429 Genseric, King of the Vandals, passed over from 
Spain into Africa, and made himself master of the whole 
northwest of Rome’s dominions there. His fleet swept 
the Mediterranean, conveying troops who conquered 
the chief islands, and made descents on the shores of 
Italy and Greece. The Western Empire was thus gradu¬ 
ally absorbed and repeopled by swarms of new inhabit¬ 
ants, many years before its formal and final extinction as 
a political fact. 

The reappearance of the savage and formidable 
Huns, under the most famous of Barbarian conquerors, 
Attila, styled by himself “the Scourage of God,” as the 
slayer and plunderer of mankind in his wide and erratic 
course of conquest. When this mighty warrior turned 
his arms against Gaul, in A. D. 450, a crisis in the his¬ 
tory of the world had come, like unto that which had 


286 ANCIENT AND MEDIAEVAL HISTORY 


been decided by Greece on the plain of Marathon more 
than nine hundred years before. The race of Rome 
was run, and the questions now to be settled were these: 
What races of mankind should inherit the civilization 
which she had received from Greece; and what should 
be the fate of the laws, institutions, and Christian faith 
which had grown up within the Roman Empire, and 
had been already accepted in part by the Germanic 
nations that had occupied most of her territories? Were 
the Aryan races of Europe to be overcome and extin¬ 
guished by Tartars from Asia? Was the civilization of 
modern Europe to include the great Teutonic element 
which has given it so much of its peculiar power and 
grandeur? Was there, in a word, to be at all any such 
modern Europe as we know? or, was the worst barbar¬ 
ism of the northern and uncivilized part of Asia to stifle 
classic culture on its way to our times, and crush the 
Christian creeds and institutions in the vigor of their 
youth? These questions were answered with a glad and 
glorious issue for mankind in the last victory won by the 
arms of Imperial Rome. 

The Germanic tribes of Europe were remarkable for 
two things—reverence for the purity of woman and love 
of personal and political liberty. From these noble ele¬ 
ments of character, when they were inspired by vital 
Christianity, were to issue the brightness of chivalry, 
and the grand reality of freedom for the greatest races 
of mankind. Since half Europe, all North America, 
and, in the British colonies, many other smaller portions 
of the earth are, in the wide sense, German (or Teutonic, 
as including the Angles and the Saxons, and the Scandi¬ 
navian nations) in race, in institutions, and in language, 
it is easy to see how the future history of the world was 
affected by the issue of the great conflict between the 


HISTORY OF ROME 387 

pagan Huns of Attila and the Christianized hosts of 
Aetius and Theodoric. 

Attila was in person a short, sinewy, huge-headed* 
keen-eyed, flat-nosed, swarthy Mongol; in character he 
was brave, just, temperate, prudent, and sagacious; he 
waged war with great skill; he was ruthless to all who 
resisted his advance. Between A. D. 445 and 450 he 
had ravaged the Eastern Empire, between the Euxine 
and the Adriatic Seas, and had acquired a large territory 
south of the Danube, in addition to his dominions north 
of the Danube and the Euxine. The force which he 
could bring into the field has been estimated at half a 
million of warriors, and in A. D. 450 he set out for the 
conquest of Western Europe, and crossed the Rhine, 
near Strasburg, into Gaul, where he proceeded to attack 
Orleans. 

The Roman General Aetius, in conjunction with 
Theodoric, King of the Visigoths, was the hero of this 
occasion. On the approach of their united armies 
Attila retreated to the plains round Chalons-sur-Marne, 
which were adapted to the movements of his cavalry. 
In the battle which ensued (A. D. 451) between the im¬ 
mense rival hosts, Theodoric was killed, and Attila’s army 
was defeated, though not routed, by the efforts of 
Aetius. The great enterprise of Attila was, however, 
completely baffled, and, after an invasion of Italy which 
took him to the gates of Rome, he died in 453. The 
Empire founded by his genius then fell to pieces, and 
the danger of Europe’s conquest by Huns had passed 
away. 

In A. D. 455, Genseric, the Vandal conqueror in 
Africa, invaded Italy, took Rome, and gave the city up 
to pillage for fourteen days. The Vandals carried off 
on their ships most of the metal statues of the temples 


288 ANCIENT AND MEDIAEVAL HISTORY 


and the Forum, and the precious trophies in the Capitol 
and the Temple of Peace, including the Golden Candle¬ 
stick from the Temple of Jerusalem. This sacred relic 
was recovered a century afterward from Africa, taken 
to Constantinople, and then replaced in Jerusalem, 
where it vanishes from history for evermore. 

The Emperors of this last period were insignificant 
personages, and in 472 the Suevian, Ricimer, who had 
served under Aetius, and had for some time been virtual 
master in Italy, took and plundered Rome again. 

The immediate cause of the fall of Rome’s Empire in 
the West was that it had proved unequal to repelling in 
war the encroachments and inroads of the barbaric 
world beyond the frontier. But why had Rome’s power 
thus succumbed to outward pressure after so many cen¬ 
turies of conquest and victorious repulse or utter 
destruction of Gallic and German assailants from the 
north? Why did the Romans prove at last inferior in 
force to the Barbarians? The first answer is, that the 
Barbaric world had grown stronger than of old. The 
confederations of Germans in the Third Century of the 
Roman Empire show that the Barbarians had learned 
the secret of strength in union. They had also improved 
in intelligence and military skill. They were, moreover, 
impelled in aggressive force against the Roman frontiers 
by the irresistible pressure wrought on themselves by 
the newcomers from Asia—the Huns. The second answer 
is, that not only had Rome failed to increase or to main¬ 
tain her power, but that power had positively and largely 
declined. Rome had ceased to conquer, and this was 
only because she had reached the limit of her resources. 
When Hadrian gave up the Parthian conquests of 
Trajan, and when Aurelian abandoned Dacia—when 
the boundaries of the Empire were thus deliberately 


HISTORY OF ROME 


289 

narrowed by able and energetic rulers—it is certain that 
Rome was becoming weak and exhausted, and that these 
rulers knew it, and wisely acted on their knowledge. It 
was no moral degeneracy, caused by luxury and success, 
that could account for this. The Roman armies were 
not affected by the doings of a brutal and effeminate 
aristocracy; the discipline was what it had ever been; 
the Generals were as capable as most of those who com¬ 
manded under the Republic. The successes of Julian 
against the Alemanni, of Theodosius against the Goths, 
of Stilicho against Alaric, and of Aetius against the 
Huns of Attila, prove that the armies of Rome could 
still fight and win. It was from physical causes, not 
moral, that Rome fell. 

The Empire perished for want of men. The Roman 
armies had become mainly composed of Barbarian 
troops, and thus the citadel of Rome’s strength was 
occupied by defenders whose very presence was a proof 
that power had passed into other hands. The dominion 
of Rome was thus absorbed rather than conquered; the 
former population of the Empire was replaced by a new 
set of men. For lack of people to till the lands within 
the frontier of Rome, whole tribes of barbarians had 
been peacefully admitted, and Vandals, Goths, and 
Franks had settled within the borders in a continual 
stream of barbaric immigration. The older races of 
the Roman Empire had for some centuries ceased to 
increase materially in numbers by the natural means, and 
in such a case, while the barbarian world was ever grow¬ 
ing, the Roman population, if even it remained posi¬ 
tively stationary, was relatively in a condition of rapid 
and alarming decay. The Roman civilization was simply 
military, and not industrial. 

The wealth of Rome was gained by war, and not by 
Vol. 1 —19 


z 9 o ANCIENT AND MEDIAEVAL HISTORY 

manufactures or by commerce, and thus, when conquest 
ceased, the acquirement of wealth came to an end, and 
lack of money, as of men, made Rome more helpless 
still. The series of visitations of disease—the Oriental 
plague—which came upon the Roman world between 
the reigns of Aurelius and Diocletian, was a calamity 
from which Rome never recovered, and existing and 
ever-growing weakness was made incurable by the inces¬ 
sant demands of an oppressive and irrational system of 
taxation. Thus, by slow degrees, from causes gradually 
working with an ever-growing effect, faded away the 
power of that great Rome which had known how to con¬ 
quer the nations, and to acquire a vast Empire including 
many races and conditions of men; how to create a cen¬ 
tralized government of great stability and efficiency, 
but not how to thwart the subtle working of physical 
and financial maladies which were inherent in the con¬ 
stitution of her whole system of society; which were fed 
by deeply-seated moral mischiefs, and were not to be 
remedied by any pagan philosophy or any statesmanship 
known to the Roman world. 

The conquest by Rome of all the countries on the 
shores of the Mediterranean had a great and beneficial 
effect upon the commerce of the inland sea, round 
which was gathered all civilization in the later 
period of the ancient world, and upon the develop¬ 
ment of that civilization itself. When Pompeius 
Magnus performed his great achievement of sweep¬ 
ing piracy away, the work was one of permanent 
benefit, and the power of Rome’s consolidated Empire 
secured for ages the peaceful traffic which could 
not fail to result in material and moral good to the peo¬ 
ples thus brought together. In the West, especially, a 
great growth of prosperity ensued. The African prov- 


HISTORY OF ROME 


291 


inces supplied half the Mediterranean world with grain. 
The eastern coast of Spain sent forth from its harbors 
corn and wool, and wine and oil, receiving in return the 
products of other regions. The Spanish cities in that 
quarter were many and populous; the arts and literature 
were sedulously cultivated, and some of the leading 
authors in Latin letters were of Spanish origin and train¬ 
ing. I11 Gaul, the southern region had already received 
civilization from Greek settlers, and the Roman con¬ 
quest carried material and intellectual culture to the 
center and north of the land, and across the narrow sea 
to Britain, where Roman supremacy secured for the peo¬ 
ple three centuries of peace and prosperity. There can 
be no doubt that human happiness was largely increased 
in these regions of the world by a dominion which put 
an end to intertribal conflicts, and gave men the prime 
blessing of orderly and systematic rule. 

But the chief benefits derived by the world from 
Rome's imperial sway were the spread of the Greek cul¬ 
ture and the clear course made for the progress of Chris¬ 
tianity. To Rome’s controlling power we owe the pres¬ 
ervation of Greek ideas in Greek literature, and the 
transmission to our times of some of the greatest pro¬ 
ductions of the Greek mind—works which Roman 
imitation took as the highest models of excellence, and 
which Roman admiration preserved, by multiplication 
of copies, for the good of future ages. As to Christian¬ 
ity, the spread of Greek philosophy over the world after 
the conquests of Alexander the Great had prepared the 
higher class of men for the reception of still nobler les¬ 
sons, and the free intercourse among the nations which 
Roman supremacy secured carried the teachers and 
preachers of the new religion to many a region which 
must have been otherwise inaccessible to their efforts 


292 ANCIENT AND MEDIAEVAL HISTORY 


and their devotion. It was thus that, long before the 
official establishment of the faith by Constantine, the sur¬ 
viving strongholds of Paganism were steadily and 
imperceptibly sapped, and, without formal assault or 
vigorous shock, crumbled into noiseless and irreparable 
ruin. 

As to art, the Romans were not originally an art- 
loving people, but used the abilities of those whom they 
had subdued by their arms. They derived the use of 
the arch and the architecture of their earliest buildings 
from the Etruscans, and the early statues in the city of 
Rome, made of terra-cotta and of bronze, were also 
Etruscan work. The conquest of Macedon brought 
Grecian influence to bear, and at the triumph of ^Emil- 
ius Paulus in B. C. 167 there was a magnificent display 
of costly armor, vases, paintings, and statues, which 
showed the people of Rome what Greece could furnish 
in the way of models of artistic work. The “triumphs” 
of Mummius over Greece and of Pompey over Mithri- 
dates brought to Rome numerous pictures, statues in 
marble, engraved gems, pearls, specimens of chased and 
embossed plate, figures and vessels of Corinthian brass, 
and splendid works in gold. As wealth and luxury 
grew, the works of statuary, mosaic, painting, and archi¬ 
tecture, executed by Greek artists, became countless, 
and many of these are now in the museums of Europe. 
Medals, coins, and cameos of fine execution were pro¬ 
duced under the Empire, the age of Hadrian and that of 
the Antonines being flourishing times for art. 

The profuse ornamentation of the triumphal arches 
and pillars in Rome has been of great antiquarian value 
for our knowledge of armor, costume, and military en¬ 
gines. The devastations of barbarians in both the west¬ 
ern and the eastern Empires caused irreparable losses; the 


HISTORY OF ROME 


2 93 


four bronze horses now at Venice are specimens of later 
and inferior Greek art, saved from destruction wrought 
at Constantinople in the Thirteenth Century. The chief 
collections of ancient sculpture are in the Vatican and 
the Capitol museums at Rome, the Museo Borbonico at 
Naples, the Villa Borghese and the Villa Albani at Rome, 
the Gallery of Florence, the Louvre in Paris, the British 
Museum in London, several private collections (Woburn 
Abbey and Lansdowne House) in England, and the 
Sculpture Gallery at Munich. In the Greek and Roman 
Courts of the Crystal Palace at Sydenham good copies 
of some of the chief productions of Grecian art in its 
principal periods may be seen. 

The last Roman Emperor of the West was a child, 
called, as if in derision, Romulus Augustulus, the one 
name being that of the city’s mythical founder, the 
other, “Augustus the Little,” a parody of the style of 
him who organized the Empire. Augustulus became 
nominal ruler in A. D. 475, and in 476 was overthrown 
by the invasion of some German tribes, of which the 
chief was called the Heruli. Their leader, Odoacer, took 
the title of “King of Italy,” and the Western Empire 
came thus ignobly to an end, in the displacing of a lad 
seven years old by the captain of a horde of banditti. 


MEDIAEVAL HISTORY 

The history of the “Middle Ages” embraces a period 
of about one thousand years, extending from the close 
of the Fifth to the end of the Fifteenth Century of the 
Christian Era. The first half of this period has been some¬ 
times called the “Dark Ages,” as if the light of ancient 
learning and culture had been well-nigh extinguished in 
the occupation of the provinces of the Western Empire of 
Rome by barbarian peoples. This time of the world’s 
history, however, is more correctly regarded as a time in 
which the creation of a fresh state of society and of civ¬ 
ilization was effected in the blending of the new with the 
old, in the adoption both of Christianity and of the olden 
institutions by the new races, mainly of German nation¬ 
ality, who appear upon the scene. The development of 
the German world begins, kindled by a foreign culture, 
a foreign religion, polity, and legislation. These new 
elements were taken up by the Teutonic tribes, and 
amalgamated with their own national life. The Chris¬ 
tian religion had already received from the Councils and 
Fathers of the church a perfected system of doctrine and 
government; the rulers of the church, moreover, pos¬ 
sessed the culture and the philosophy of the Greek and 
Roman world, and the Latin tongue, in its perfectly 
developed form, continued for ages to be the language 
of literature and men of learning. The new system of 
things was, in this sense, merely a continuation of the 
old; but there lived in it an entirely new spirit, through 
which the world was to be politically and socially regen¬ 
erated—the spirit of freedom, which was ultimately to 

294 


MEDIAEVAL HISTORY 


2 95 


reconcile the antagonistic principles of Church and State, 
and regulate the political life of nations by reason, after 
the church had failed in her attempt to maintain herself 
as a theocracy, and the State had passed through the 
form of feudal to that of constitutional monarchy. 

A brief summary of what is included in these thou¬ 
sand years of history will show an abundance of stirring 
and interesting matter, which should fully rid the period 
of the character for dullness with which it has sometimes 
been invested. The close of the Fifth Century shows 
us the beginnings of England in the first lodgment 
effected by the Angles and Saxons on the shores of this 
island. In the Sixth the Latin tongue begins to turn 
into French, Italian, Spanish, and the Benedictine 
monks found the first monasteries. The Seventh sees 
the wondrous career of Mahomet, and the beginnings 
of Saracen conquest. In the Eighth, Europe is saved 
for Christianity by Charles Martel’s defeat of the Sara¬ 
cens at Tours, and the great Slavonic race (a burning 
question in modern diplomacy, as it deals with Russia 
and Bulgaria) begins to be felt in Eastern Europe. The 
Ninth brings the feudal system and the temporal power 
of the Popes. In the Tenth Saxon supremacy in Eng¬ 
land is firmly established and feudality begins. In the 
Eleventh the German Empire is the great political fact, 
side by side with Papal supremacy, asserted by Gregory 
VII, and the capture of Jerusalem by the Turks, which 
results in the Crusades. In the Twelfth, under full- 
grown feudalism, we have the age of chivalry, the 
great Italian republics, and the beginning of power for 
France under Philip Augustus. The Thirteenth has the 
rise of modern towns and the germ of political freedom 
in municipal institutions. Trade, manufactures, bank¬ 
ing, begin to assert their importance. Men dare to 


2 9 6 ANCIENT AND MEDIEVAL HISTORY 

doubt the dogmas of the Church, and the Inquisition 
meets “heresy” by organized torture and murder. The 
Papal power is at its height, and the Christians of Spain 
have at last loosened fairly the grip of the Saracens. In 
the fourteenth, intellectual light is growing, and Eng¬ 
land, France, Italy, Germany, have the rise of a native 
literature. The compass makes maritime discovery pos¬ 
sible, and the use of gunpowder changes the character 
of warfare. A Swiss Republic exists. Feudal barons 
decay as monarchs rise to power. The Fifteenth Cen¬ 
tury brings the crisis to which the work of a thousand 
years has been leading mankind, and the new world of 
geography coincides with a new world of mental and 
social life due to the invention of printing, the revival of 
classical learning, the growth of free thought, the rise 
of a middle class, and the establishment of law and order. 

The Aryan migration into Europe from Asia has 
been dealt with in the first part of this work. The 
ancient history of Europe has been concerned with the 
Italic (Latin) and Hellenic races as the ruling and con¬ 
quering powers of the civilized world. The modern his¬ 
tory of Europe has to do partly with races of mixed des¬ 
cent arising from the union of these old historic peo¬ 
ples with barbarian tribes, but mainly with the other 
great races of the Aryan stock—the Celts, the Teutons, 
and the Slavs or Slavonians. 

At the present day nine-tenths of the people of 
Europe belong to the Aryan stock; the other tenth, con¬ 
sisting of the Turks, the Magyars (in Hungary), the 
Finns, and the Laplanders, is Mongolian in race, akin, 
(though now very different in character and appearance) 
to the Chinese, Burmese, Siamese, and other peoples in 
the southeast of the mainland of Asia. 

In early historical times the Celts inhabited the Brit- 




ENTRY OF MOHAMMED II. INTO CONSTANTINOPLE 
Painting by Benjamin Constant 






MEDIEVAL HISTORY 


297 


ish Isles, Gaul, Spain, and the north of Italy; the Teu¬ 
tons occupied the territory known as Sweden, Norway, 
Denmark, and central Germany; an Aryan people called 
Lithuanians had settled on the southern coast of the 
Baltic; the Slavonians were to be found in the great 
Eastern plain, forming the modern Empire of European 
Russia. 

Of the three great Aryan races—Celts, Teutons, and 
Slavonians—the Romans came into close contact with 
two only—the Celts and the Teutons. The Celts of 
Britain, Gaul, and Spain were conquered by Rome, and 
those of Gaul and Spain especially took up the Latin 
language and civilization, receiving the Roman citizen¬ 
ship, and being converted to Christianity before the end 
of the Western Empire. 

The terms Teutonic, Gothic, and Germanic are all 
used to designate the great race of men that had occu¬ 
pied central and northern Europe, and was destined to 
work so powerfully in the development of the modern 
civilization. The chief tribes of this great race were 
the Goths (divided into the Visigoths and the Ostro¬ 
goths), the Vandals, the Franks (i. e., the “Free men/’ a 
confederacy of tribes on the Lower Rhine), the Burgundi¬ 
ans, the Lombards (in Latin, Langobardi or Longo- 
bardi, originally from the banks of the Elbe, then found 
north of the Danube in the Fifth Century, A. D.), the 
Angles, the Saxons, and the Scandinavians or Norse¬ 
men. 

The Vandals invaded Spain (where their name sur¬ 
vives in the name of the district Andalusia), and passed 
over into Africa, where they founded a powerful king¬ 
dom. The Ostrogoths, under their King Theodoric the 
Great, overcame Odoacer in Italy, and Theodoric ruled 
there as head of a peaceful and prosperous realm from 


I 


29s ANCIENT AND MEDIAEVAL HISTORY 

A. D. 493 to 526. The Roman laws and institutions 
were maintained, and the age was distinguished by the 
learning and statesmanship of Cassiodorus, and of the 
famous Boethius, who was great in Greek philosophy, 
and wrote (during his imprisonment by Theodoric for 
opposing certain oppressive measures), the well-known 
work, De Consolatione Philosophise (“On the comfort 
of philosophy”). This book is pure in style and of a 
high tone of thought; its author was the last of the west¬ 
ern Romans to study deeply the literature and language 
of Greece, from which he translated many works of Aris¬ 
totle and other philosophers. The Visigoths had 
founded a kingdom which included what is now Spain, 
Portugal, and southern France, the capital being Tolosa 
(now Toulouse). This Visigothic Kingdom lasted for 
two centuries, when it was overthrown by the Saracens, 
after losing the portion in Gaul through conquest by the 
Franks from Germany. 

In A. D. 486 the Franks, under a King named Clovis 
(a corrupted form of his German name Chlodwig, and 
really the same as the modern Louis) invaded and con¬ 
quered a part of Gaul, and the first or Merovingian 
dynasty (from Merwig, grandsire of Clovis) of the earlier 
monarchy of France was established, the name France 
being derived from the conquering people, as England 
from the Angles. These tall, blue-eyed, flaxen-haired 
Germans, armed with heavy swords, battle-axes, and 
large shields, gradually made their way to the south, 
and drove out the Visigoths, but settled themselves 
chiefly in the north of Gaul. Clovis and his people em¬ 
braced the faith of his wife Clotilda, a Christian Princess 
of Burgundian race, and the Frank conquerers adopted 
the language (a corrupted Latin) spoken by the con¬ 
quered Gauls. Clovis died in A. D. 511, and the divi- 


MEDLEVAL HISTORY 


299 


sion of his dominions among his sons was followed by 
a period of dreary warfare and crime. The dominion of 
the Franks extended far to eastward of the Rhine. 
Thus much of Gaul passed from being a Roman prov¬ 
ince into the form of a monarchy inaugurated by Ger¬ 
man barbarians. The Burgundians established a King¬ 
dom in the southeast of Gaul, which disappeared for a 
time by Frankish conquest, and the boundaries of which 
varied from time to time according to their successes 
in war against neighboring states. 

The Kingdoms founded by the Lombards and the 
Scandinavian tribes come later in the history. The 
Angles and the Saxons belonged to the Low Dutch 
division of the Teutonic race, being that portion of the 
German peoples that had not been Christianized or civ¬ 
ilized in Roman times, and that dwelt near the sea, by 
the mouths of the Rhine, Weser, and Elbe. The Ger¬ 
man tribes with whom we have dealt in connection with 
the Roman Empire belonged to the High Dutch divi¬ 
sion, dwelling in central and southern Germany away 
from the sea. The conquest of Britain by the Angles, 
Saxons, and Jutes, was completed by the end of the 
Sixth Century, the English Nation was gradually 
formed, the land was Christianized bv missionaries from 
Rome under St. Augustine in the Seventh Century, and 
the people were united into one realm under Egbert 
early in the Ninth. 

From the union of the new Germanic Nations and 
tongues with those of the conquered Roman Empire of 
the West sprang the Romance (i. e., Romanized or Lat¬ 
inized) peoples and languages of mediaeval and modern 
Europe. The Latin of literature and of educated speech 
was corrupted in the common parlance of the people of 
Gaul, of Spain, and of Italy, and from this corruption 


300 ANCIENT AND MEDIAEVAL HISTORY 

and the admixture of Teutonic words arose the Proven¬ 
cal tongue of southern France, and the French, Spanish, 
and Italian languages. In the east of Switzerland and 
in Roumania (part of the ancient Dacia) the language 
spoken by the people is also of Latin origin. The chief 
Latin or Romance Nations of modern Europe are there¬ 
fore the French, Spanish, and Italian; in the earlier 
mediaeval times the people of the districts called Pro¬ 
vence and Aquitaine, south of the Loire, are to be 
regarded as a separate Nation from the French to the 
north of that river. 

The English language is in the main Teutonic, with a 
Romance or Latin element in the Norman-French, Old 
French, and Latin words introduced after the conquests 
the German nations of central Europe and the people of 
Holland have kept their speech free from the influence 
of Latin, as also the Scandinavian nations, including the 
Danes, Swedes, and Norwegians. The Slavonic races 
of Europe (Russians, Poles, etc.) speak languages of 
their own, Aryan in origin, but distinct both from the 
Romance and Teutonic tongues. The Celtic tongues 
(Gaelic, Erse of Ireland, and Manx being included) are 
almost extinct, save in Wales and in Brittany, inhabited 
by Celtic descendants of the ancient Britons, who still 
to a great degree retain the olden speech, and in the 
Highlands of Scotland. 

The Eastern, Greek, or Byzantine Empire continued 
to exist for nearly a thousand years after the downfall 
of the Western, and to pass gradually to decay, while the 
new nationalities and the new civilization of Europe 
were being developed in ever-growing vigor under the 
influence of the German spirit that was to regenerate the 
world. The Emperors at Constantinople, though they 
ruled dominions where the language and civilization 


MEDIAEVAL HISTORY 


3 °i 


were mainly Greek, still claimed to be Roman Emperors, 
and under their sway the laws and official forms of Im¬ 
perial Rome were maintained. The head of the Chris¬ 
tian Church in the East was the Patriarch of Constanti¬ 
nople, as the Bishop of Rome was in the West. 

The Byzantine Empire reached its highest point of 
power and fame in the Sixth Century, during the reign 
of Justinian, A. D. 527-565. It was he who built the 
great Church (now the Mosque in Mahommedan hands) 
of Saint Sophia at Constantinople. His chief service to 
mankind was the codification of the laws of Rome, to 
which is due the great system of Roman jurisprudence 
called the Civil Law, forming the basis of so much of the 
law in European states at the present day. 

The Roman law was an active and living principle. 
It was always open to receive new impressions, and 
anxious for improvement and development. It set 
before itself ideas of humanity and justice which it aimed 
at accomplishing. It trained multitudes of keen intel¬ 
lects in the contemplation and pursuit of broad and 
noble ends. It constituted in itself a wide and liberal 
education, and familiarized its students first with the 
highest philosophy, and afterward with the purest 
religion of the period. It had been the constant policy 
of the Emperors to render the old municipal law of 
Rome a fitting instrument for the Government of a 
world-wide Empire. Ideas of universal equity replaced, 
under their patronage, the narrow selfishness of the 
Twelve Tables. From the time of Augustus the sub¬ 
jects of the conquering city received a long and patient 
training in the philosophy of jurisprudence. While the 
Empire was tottering to its fall they still cherished a con¬ 
viction of the permanence of the principles on which its 
social fabric had so long been maintained. At the end 


302 ANCIENT AND MEDLEYAL HISTORY 

of the Fourth Century the poet Rutilius could boldly 
prophesy that in her legal institutions Rome should yet 
be immortal. In this faith her jurists still persevered, 
working bravely for an unknown future. When the 
Theodosian Code or Digest was at last promulgated by 
the third Valentinian, Africa was already occupied by 
the Vandals, Gaul and Spain had been seized by the 
Visigoths and Burgundians; the Franks, the Saxons, the 
Ostrogoths, and the Lombards were visibly hovering in 
the rear; but preparation had been thus made for placing 
all these barbarians under civil restraints, and to these 
restraints they for the most part consented to submit. 
It was this “noble legacy” of Roman law that Justinian 
undertook to put into a practical shape, suited to the 
then present and future needs of the whole world. 

In A. D. 528-529 a number of commissioners, includ¬ 
ing the famous Tribonianus, completed the Codex Jus- 
tinianus (Justinian’s Code), a summary of the imperial 
legislation of Rome. Tribonian, then at the head of 
another commission, superintended the compilation, 
from the books of the great Roman jurists, of the work 
known as the Digest or Pandects (i. e., “arranged mat¬ 
ter” or “all-embracing work”), containing authoritative 
interpretations and judgments on legal points. A third 
commission, including Tribonian, then prepared a 
simple elementary summary called Institutiones (“Insti¬ 
tutes,” i. e. precepts or principles), based chiefly on the 
above-named work of Gains. A second revised edition 
of the Code was published in 534, and this work, with 
the Pandects (or Digest), the Institutes, and a supple¬ 
ment to the Code, known as the Novels (in Latin 
“Novelise Constitutiones,” “new enactments”), form the 
Corpus Juris Civilis (“Body of Civil Law”), the Roman 
law as generally accepted in Europe. 


MEDIAEVAL HISTORY 


303 


In the East, Justinian's great General, the famous 
Belisatius, an Illyrian of low birth, fought against the 
Persian King (one of the greatest monarchs of the later 
Persian Empire) Chosroes I (or Nushirvan), who 
reigned A. D. 531-579. Justinian purchased peace by 
payment of tribute to this Oriental despot, whose 
Empire extended from the Red Sea to the Indus. In 
the West, Justinian’s arms had great success. In 534 
the Vandal Kingdom in Africa was brought to an end 
by the victories of Belisarius. I11 535 Belisarius con¬ 
quered Sicily, and from 535-540, and again from 541- 
544, fought with the Goths in Italy, until the jealousy of 
his master recalled him. His successor in command, 
Narses, completed the overthrow of the Ostrogothic 
Kingdom in Italy by his campaigns in 552-553. Under 
Justinian, the Visigoths were driven out of the south of 
Spain, so that there was for a time a revived Roman 
Empire of the West, and the Roman dominion again 
comprised almost the whole of the Mediterranean coasts. 
Justinian died in 565, and a speedy change came in Italy. 

The warlike German people called Lombards had 
settled in Pannonia (territory in the south of what is 
now the Austrian Empire), by Justinian’s invitation, 
about 540. In their new quarters they fought to exter¬ 
mination with the Gothic people called Gepidse, and in 
568 passed over the Alps into the fertile plain of north¬ 
ern Italy which still bears their name. Under their 
King Alboin, the Lombards subdued all the north and 
much of the south of Italy (the central part, including 
the cities of Rome and Ravenna, on the Adriatic, with 
Sicily, Corsica, and Sardinia, remaining still Roman)., 
and the Lombard Kingdom of Italy thus formed con¬ 
tinued for two centuries, until it was conquered by Char¬ 
lemagne. The growth of Venice dates from the time of 


304 ANCIENT AND MEDIAEVAL HISTORY 

this Lombard conquest, when fugitives from their cruel 
ravages fled for safety to the islands and lagoons at the 
head of the Adriatic Sea, where a town had been previous¬ 
ly founded by fugitives from the Huns. The flourishing 
period of the Eastern Empire closes for a long time with 
Heraclius, who died in A. D. 641. The Persians, and 
the Mongolian race from Asia called the Turks (with 
their kinsmen the Avars), attacked the Empire in 
formidable strength. Between 611 and 615 the Per¬ 
sians overran Egypt, Syria, and Asia Minor, remaining 
encamped for ten years within sight of Constantinople. 
At last Heraclius arose from his sluggish impotence, and 
with great ability and courage, between 620 and 627, 
recovered the whole of the Persian conquests. 

On the whole, the Byzantine Empire presents the 
dreary spectacle of a state possessing the form and the 
dogmas, with very little of the life, power, and spirit of 
the Christianity which was the established religion of the 
realm. The chief interests in religious matters were 
fierce and endless disputes and conflicts about doctrine 
and image-worship, and on the appointment to ecclesi¬ 
astical offices. Murder, conflagration, and plunder re¬ 
sulted from differences of dogma and of worship. In 
secular affairs, sanguinary encounters arose between the 
factions of the blue and the green, the distinguishing 
colors of the different parties of combatants in the 
gladiatorial games, which cruel spectacles the Christi¬ 
anity of Constantinople had not succeeded in abolishing 
as a source of popular delight. Greek culture was still 
preserved in these Eastern provinces, “where the ancient 
civilization, though slowly fading away under the influ¬ 
ence of rnisgovernment, might still astonish and instruct 
barbarians; where the court still exhibited the splendor 
of Diocletian and Constantine; where the public build 


MEDIAEVAL HISTORY 


3° 5 


mgs were still adorned with the sculptures of Polycletus 
and the paintings of Apelles, and where laborious ped¬ 
ants, themselves destitute of taste, sense, and spirit, 
could still read and interpret the master-pieces of 
Sophocles, of Demosthenes, and of Plato.” 

The history of this Byzantine Empire presents, again 
and again, disgusting pictures of weakness against out¬ 
ward attack, evil passions within, rebellious Generals, 
Emperors deposed, and often poisoned or otherwise 
murdered by their own wives and sons, intellectual decay 
and moral corruption bringing all at last, after periods of 
revived power and prosperity, to long-delayed and then 
irretrievable ruin. 

Clovis, founder of the Merovingian dynasty, died in 
A. D. 511, and his descendants kept for nearly two cen¬ 
turies the crown which he had won; but the history of 
the Frankish Empire during this period is chiefly that of 
the follies or crimes of weak or wicked Kings, while 
frequent changes took place in the boundaries of the 
Kingdom. In 584 the real power passed over to 
certain officials called Mayors of the Palace. The Min¬ 
ister called Mayor of the Palace was elected by the 
Frank nobles, and, in command of the army, was the 
actual sovereign; the stupid slothfulness of the nominal 
monarchs has given them the title of Rois faineants or 
Do-nothing Kings. In 687 a Mayor of the Palace 
named Pepin (of Heristal, a town on the Meuse) de¬ 
feated rival Frankish claimants, and, acquiring rule over 
the whole Frankish dominions, really founded the Sec¬ 
ond or Carlovingian dynasty, already holding his office 
of Mayor by hereditary right. His son, Charles Martel, 
was a vigoros ruler, famous for his victory over the Mus¬ 
sulman invaders of France in 732. In 752 Pepin the 

Short, son of Charles, became King of the Franks iit 
Voi,. 1 — 20 


306 ANCIENT AND MEDIAEVAL HISTORY 

name as well as in fact, being - crowned by the Pope with 
the title of “King of Francia,” while the dynasty of the 
Merovingian Kings was brought to an end by the formal 
deposition of the last of the rois faineants, Childeric III. 

In the northwest corner of Europe, aloof from the 
troubles that harassed the races on the Continent, were 
what is now known as the British Isles, but which then 
were reckoned as of a scant importance. To its inhabi¬ 
tants of Celtic origin had come successively tribes of 
Teutonic origin driven from the Continent by enemies. 
Rough and uncouth were they when Caesars all-con¬ 
quering armies made a raid in 55 B. C., which Claudius 
attempted (in A. D. 43) to make a complete conquest, 
but without entire success. The Britons met their 
formidable foes with a most tenacious and determined 
opposition. Vespasian, afterward Emperor of Rome, 
had all he could do to win for Rome, after many battles, 
the territory now forming Hampshire and the Isle of 
Wight. But four years later Roman skill and discipline 
won their way, and Caractacus being defeated by Ostorius 
Scapula, the limits of Roman sway were increased. 
Under Boadicea, a female ruler in the eastern district, 
the tribes rose in revolt, being wearied by extortions, 
licentiousness and insults to Druidism, which was the 
National worship. Led by the Queen herself, the 
Britons for a time were triumphant, but in the end Sue¬ 
tonius captured the stronghold of the Druids in Mona, 
cut down the sacred groves of oaks and burned the 
priests in their own wicker idols. This was the end of 
the independence of the Kings who ruled the scattered 
British tribes. Eight years of wise government ended 
occasion for revolt. Yet all of Briton was never sub¬ 
dued by the Romans, who attempted by great defensive 
works to exclude from their dominions the still uncon- 


MEDIEVAL HISTORY 3°7 

quered Celts of the North. With them there was con¬ 
stant warfare. 

Three distinct races existed in Britain under the 
Roman rule. At the North, now known as Scotland, 
were the Caledonians, Piets, and Scots unsubdued by 
the Romans. The Scots are known to have been Gaelic 
immigrants from Ireland—the language spoken by some 
of the Scotch Highlanders to-day being the same as the 
Erse tongue spoken by the Irish. The Piets have 
always been a puzzle to ethnologists, for though they 
were probably of the Celtic race, their language differed 
from that of the British and Irish. In the East and 
South were the Logrians, who had come under the influ¬ 
ence of the Roman civilization. At the West, beyond 
the Severn, were the Cambrians or Welsh, who seemed 
invincible in their mountain fastnesses. Abandoned by 
the legions (428), and without defense from the Piets, 
the Logrians appealed (453) for aid to the Saxons, the 
Jutes, and the Angles, who were constantly leaving their 
German and Scandinavian shores to plough the seas. 
Two Saxon chiefs, Hengist and Horsa, vanquished the 
Piets and received in recompense the Isle of Thanet, off 
the shore of Kent. But Hengist, despoiling those who 
had called him, took possession of the country from the 
Thames to the Channel and gave himself the title of 
King of Kent. From this time the ambition of these 
pirates was to secure a foothold in Britain. In 491 the 
Kingdom of Sussex was founded, in 516 that of Wes¬ 
sex, in 526 that of Essex. The invasion of the Angles 
began in 547, and they founded the Kingdoms of North¬ 
umberland on the east side of the island, and those of 
East Anglia (577) and of Mercia (584). This made 
three English Kingdoms besides the four Saxon ones, 
being in all seven petty monarchies, which later became 


3 o8 ANCIENT AND MEDIAEVAL HISTORY 


a single State. The Saxons formed the basis of the 
actual population of the country, and England owes her 
language to them. Long before political union had 
been reached the unity of the people found expression 
in a single Christian church. The political union of 
England was effected during the thirty-six years’ rule 
of Egbert (801-837), King of Wessex, who had seen 
something of centralization in the court of Charlemagne, 
whose friend he was. 


RISE OF THE SARACENS 


Early in the Seventh Century a movement began in 
the heart of Arabia which was to result in a succession 
of the most stupendous religious and political revolu¬ 
tions that the world has ever witnessed. The Arabs or 
Saracens were about to assail, almost at the same time, 
every Nation and tribe of the Old Roman and Persian 
world, from India and the borders of China to France 
and Spain. The term Arabs means “people of the 
West” (from their position in Asia), and the word Sara¬ 
cens means “people of the East,” the name adopted by 
them after their passage into Africa and Europe, when 
the former title had become geographically inappropri¬ 
ate. The fact that Islamism is at the present day the 
hope and the faith of some two hundred millions of the 
human race gives an enduring interest to the story of 
the deeds of those who brought about so mighty a 
result. The Saracens, now attacking Aryan Europe, 
were of Semitic race, and theirs is the only Semitic 
power which has played any great part in history since 
the time of the great dominion of Carthage. Islamism 
is also the last of three great religions which have come 
out from among the Semitic nations, and all of which 
taught men that there is but one God, and bade them to 
keep from the worship of idols. First came Judaism, 
then Christianity, and last the religion of Mahomet (or 
Mohammed). 

The secret of the power wielded by the Saracens lay in 
the religious enthusiasm which is called fanaticism—the 
reckless fervor of abandonment to the one present passion 

309 


3io ANCIENT AND MEDIEVAL HISTORY 

of the soul. In their poetry, in love, in the warfare by 
means of which their religion was so widely spread, this 
enthusiastic devotion is displayed. Hence the extraordi¬ 
nary rapidity of their conquests in forcing the peoples, 
under the influence of terror, to embrace a faith which, in 
order to promote the worship of the One God, has no 
regard to race, or caste, or nation, or political distinction; 
a religious system, in which it was the highest merit to die 
on its behalf, with promise of a sure reward in Paradise 
for him who should fall fighting for the cause. 

Their enthusiasm was roused by the founder of a new 
religion—Mahomet. This extraordinary man was born 
at the sacred city of Mecca, in Arabia, in the year 569. 
He came of a noble family among a people who have been 
described as “the semi-barbarous sons of the Desert, but 
slightly penetrated with the civilization of city life; a peo¬ 
ple whose courage was the daring of the robber—a race 
careless alike of fatigue and danger, lawless in daring, 
pertinacious of purpose, implacable in revenge, strangers 
as yet to the enervation that is born of wealth and luxury 
and power, but not devoid of a rude chivalry of action and 
an imaginative poetry of feeling—such were the Arabians 
of the time of Mahomet. When the great religious re¬ 
former appeared among the Arabs, the old patriarchal 
faith, of the time when Job was an Arabian chieftain, had 
been changed into a degrading idolatry, and in the Kaaba 
or sacred temple, at Mecca, 360 graven and molten images 
were standing. In Persia the philosophical and elevating 
creed of Zoroaster had degenerated into vague mysticism 
and fire-worship, while in Syria and Egypt Christianity 
had hidden its face, amid a wild carnival of fantastic spec¬ 
ulations, idolatries, and heresies. But the hour and the 
man had now come. 

Over the scattered tribes of Arabia there arose a King, 


RISE OF THE SARACENS 


3*1 


and over their divided worships a priest and a prophet. 
“There is no God but God, and Mahomet is His prophet. 
God is one, Almighty, all-righteous, not a mere cold and 
remote abstraction, no motionless image graven in stone 
or marble, but a living God, the King of Kings, and the 
Lord of Lords. He has chosen you to be the workers of 
His will and the champions of His truth. He has called 
you to victory over the infidel in this world, and to an ever¬ 
lasting paradise in the next. ,, It needs no great effort of 
the imagination to picture the effect of such an announce¬ 
ment, when once it had succeeded in gaining for itself a 
hearing. It was at once an appeal to the deepest and 
truest instincts of a Semitic people, and the gathering cry 
of an awakened patriotism. It proclaimed to the skeptic 
a creed, and to the warriors a warfare and a crown. Ta 
win the joys of Paradise by the subjugation and conver¬ 
sion of the earth was a prospect which might well whet a 
worldly ambition no less than stimulate a religious zeal, 
and we wonder not so much at the victories of Islamism 
as that it left anything unconquered, and that, after the 
fiercest onslaughts of the Saracen, the incense of Christian 
worship still went up from the temple of St. Sophia. 
Such, in its purer beginnings, was the religious system 
which has endured for twelve hundred years, recognizing 
and perpetuating the two fatal social evils of polygamy 
and slavery, stereotyping despotism, and making political 
progress impossible by the inextricable interweaving of the 
civil law with the divine in the eternal and immutable 
Koran. 

In 629 Mohammed* captured the holy city, Mecca, 
completed the conquest of Arabia, and, after calling on the 
King of Persia (Chosroes II) and the Byzantine Emperor 
(Heraclius) to embrace Islamism, prepared to march be* 

*See volume ‘‘World’s Famous Foreign Statesmen.” 


312 ancient and mediaeval history 

yond the borders of Arabia. At this juncture he died, 
cut off by a fever at Medina in A. D. 632. 

The leaders and rulers of the Arabs who came after 
Mohammed were called his Caliphs or Successors, and the 
first of them was his father-in-law, Abubeker. The suc¬ 
cess of the arms of Islam was generally rapid. The choice 
offered to mankind lay among three things—the Koran, 
tribute, or the sword—all must either embrace the new 
faith, pay tribute for the keeping of their old faith, or die. 
By the year 639 all Syria and Egypt had been conquered, 
and the armies started westward through Northern Africa, 
and swept on northward to Asia Minor, and eastward over 
Persia. Persia and the east of Asia Minor fell an easy 
prey; but in Africa, where Christianity was strongly estab¬ 
lished, a long and stout resistance was made, the conquest 
not being completed till 709. From Africa the followers 
of the prophet crossed over into Spain, and by the year 
713 the Crescent was triumphant by the Atlantic in the 
West, and in the Indian province of Sind, (or Scinde) in 
the East 

In 673 the Saracens were repulsed from Constanti¬ 
nople, and in 718 a formidable crisis came. The ruler of 
the Eastern Empire was, happily for Europe and the 
world, a man of vigor and ability, Leo the Isaurian (from 
Isauria, a district of Asia Minor), and his repulse of the 
Saracen attacks on Constantinople, and his defeat of the 
foe beneath her walls, prevented a loss which, at that 
epoch, would have been most serious for the religion and 
civilization of Europe. Constantinople was then the 
head of Christendom, and the law, literature, and the¬ 
ology which she contained and represented might have 
perished in a Saracen success. The efforts of the Sara* 
cens to enter Europe by the east continued at intervals 
for many years afterward, but they never had any perrna- 



GODFREY ENTERS JERUSALEM 
Painting by Karl von Piloty 














. 


* 

















































































































RISE OF THE SARACENS 


3i3 


nent success in or beyond the west of Asia Minor, and 
the faith of the Mussulmans (the words Moslem, Mus¬ 
lim, and Mussulman are derived from Islam, and mean 
‘ the Righteous,’ i. e. “those who are at peace with God 
through right doing” was to become established at 
Constantinople by Mongolian instead of by the original 
Semitic believers. 

It was in A. D. 711-713 that the Saracens (or Moors, 
as the Spanish writers have called them, because they 
crossed over into Spain from Mauritania, the modern 
Morocco) overthrew the Kingdom of the Visigoths in 
Spain. The leader of the Saracen (Moorish) invaders 
was named Tarik, and the place of his landing derives its 
name, Gibraltar, from the Arabic words Gebel-al-Tarik, 
“the rock of Tarik.” The town of Tarifa (the most 
southerly place in Europe, having still the fortifications 
built by the Moors, and a very ancient Moorish castle), 
southwest of Gibraltar, preserves the name of the same 
victorious General. The Visigothic King Roderick, 
called “the last of the Goths,” was decisively defeated at 
the town north of Cadiz called Xeres de la Frontera, and 
in the struggle Roderick—a hero of Spanish romance— 
was killed. In a short time afterward all Spain was 
subdued by the Saracens, with the exception of a narrow 
mountainous strip in the north, where the Christians 
maintained themselves and their faith. The Moorish or 
Saracenic rule in Spain lasted in whole or in part for 700 
years. 

The Saracens’ invasion of Europe soon crossed the 
Pyrenees into southern Gaul (a more correct designa¬ 
tion than “France” at this period of history) and made 
a lodgment there. Another great crisis in the history of 
Europe and the world had come—one in which was to 
be decided a contest between the Crescent and the 


3M ANCIENT AND MEDIEVAL HISTORY 

Cross, and which was to issue in the deliverance of 
European Christendom, save in Spain, from Islam, and 
in the re-establishment of the old superiority of the 
Indo-European over the Semitic family of mankind. 

A young Prince of Germanic race, Karl Martel (or 
Charles Martel, in the French form of his name), was 
the champion of the Christian cause in this great wager 
of battle, when appeal was made by arms to the one 
God whom both the combatants acknowledged and 
adored. It was exactly a Century after the death of 
Mohammed (A. D. 632) when the deliverance wrought by 
the battle of Tours thus affected the future welfare of 
mankind (732). 

In the summer of A. D. 732 the great Saracenic 
leader Abderahman, a brave and skillful General, led a 
great host of Moslem soldiery—Syrians, Moors, Sara¬ 
cens, Persians, Tartars—across the Pyrenees, and, with 
his clouds of light cavalry, overran the country as far as 
the Loire. In October the great seven-days’ battle of 
Moslem horse—white-turbaned warriors of tawny skin 
—against the fair-haired, stalwart Frankish foot, steel- 
helmed, and armed with heavy sword, or battle-axe, or 
mace—was fought upon the plain between the towns of 
Poitiers and Tours. The end was that the Saracens 
were utterly defeated, Abderahman was slain, and the 
attempt of Islam to conquer Europe by the west had 
signally and finally failed. The Frankish leader, Charles 
(son of Pepin of Heristal), was surnamed Martel (old 
French for “Hammer”) for the crushing blow thus dealt, 
as if with the favorite weapon of the war-god (Thor) ot 
his forefathers’ pagan creed. 

It was only for a short time that the vast dominion 
acquired by the Saracenic conquests was kept together 
as a single Empire, over which one Caliph ruled from 


RISE OF THE SARACENS 


3i5 


India to Spain. In A. D. 755 the Empire was divided 
into the Eastern and Western Caliphates, the Western 
Caliph having Spain, with his capital at Cordova; and 
the Eastern Saracenic Empire including northern Africa 
and the East, with the capital first at Damascus and then 
at Bagdad. The Caliph at Bagdad was generally re¬ 
garded as the head of the world of Islam, as various sects 
arose, and various parts of the Empire were split off 
under the pressure of Turkish invasion from the East. 

The best known of the Caliphs of Bagdad is Haroun- 
al-Raschid, who succeeded to power in 786. In the 
“Arabian Nights” we have a picture of the life led by 
this monarch and by his people in the capital. After his 
time, province after province was lost to the Turks, and 
in A. D. 1258 the Mongols, under the leadership of a 
grandson of Genghis Khan, conquered the Caliphate of 
Bagdad, and subverted the dynasty of the Seljukian 
Turks (from Seljuk, a chieftain of Bokhara in the Ninth 
Century) which had been established there. 

The Mohammedan rule in Spain was at its strongest 
under the Caliph Abdalrahman, about the middle of the 
Tenth Century. In 1051 the Moors, who had been 
summoned from Africa to help the Saracens against the 
advancing power of the Christians, overthrew the Cali¬ 
phate of Cordova, and the real Moorish dominion in 
southern Spain began. 

To the Arabs Europe is indebted for many of the arts 
and sciences. It was no race of rude and savage war¬ 
riors that secured a foothold in the southern part of the 
Continent. The Arabs liked and practiced commerce 
long before the rise of Mohammed, who was originally a 
camel-driver. The armies prepared the way for cara¬ 
vans in Asia and Africa, and their merchants traveled by 
roads in every direction. The Arabs became sailors 


3 i6 ANCIENT AND MEDIAEVAL HISTORY 


and, already acquainted with the use of a compass, im¬ 
perfectly borrowed from the Chinese, they voyaged over 
the Red Sea and the Sea of Oman penetrating as far as 
Hindustan and Indo-China. African commerce served 
as a link between the East and West. The ports of Tri¬ 
poli, Tunis, and Tangiers had inherited the fortune of 
the vandal Carthage; Egypt wisely governed, preserved 
her old fertility. Haroun-al-Raschid, Abou-Giafar, and 
Al-Mamoun, displayed in the Eighth and Ninth Centuries 
the most wonderful luxury at Bagdad. Palaces orna¬ 
mented with marble columns, and with rich carpets 
manufactured in the East, superb gardens, refreshed by 
marble fountains falling into marble basins, a profusion 
of silken materials from India and of precious stones, 
every refinement of luxury, and all the magnificence of 
the old Oriental monarchies—this scarcely describes the 
pomp of the Caliphs, who lavished thus the tributes 
levied from a hundred races. Arab poets do not appear 
to have exaggerated the wealth of these sovereigns of 
Bagdad who succeeded to the riches of Egypt and Asia. 

The Caliphs of Cordova were not less opulent 
through the wise administration of Abd-er-Rahman I, 
of Hischam I, of Abd-er-IIahman II, of Al-Hakkem I, 
or of Al-Hakkem II. Arab agriculture converted sev¬ 
eral parts of Spain into vast gardens, where all the most 
beautiful plants of the southern countries flourished. 
The ingenuity of the Arabs counteracted the dryness of 
the climate by skillful irrigation, and aqueducts con¬ 
veyed the water preserved in artificial ponds. The 
Arabs introduced rice, cotton, the sugar-cane, and the 
date-palm into Spain. The most illustrious chiefs were 
proud in personally cultivating their own gardens. The 
towns were filled with manufactures of silk, cotton, and 
cloth. The Arabs introduced the use of indigo and 


RISE OF THE SARACENS 


3 l 7 


cochineal, or rich porcelain-colored earthenware and 
linen paper into Spain. They excelled in the art of dye- 
ing'. The leathers of Cordova and the well-tempered 
weapons of Toledo were famous. Spain maintained a 
large commerce, and the Caliphs of Cordova had at least 
a thousand ships in their fleets. 

The first Caliphs would have liked to confine all 
learning to reading the Koran, but they were not so 
barbarous as they were reported to be, and the confla¬ 
gration of the Alexandrian library was not ordered by 
Omar. Science and education flourished. Haroun 
never traveled without a procession of savants and he 
endeavored to found a free school by the side of each 
mosque. Al-Mamoun ordered a search made for valua¬ 
ble manuscripts and for their translation he paid their 
weight in gold. Ten thousand pupils studied in the 
College of Bagdad alone. The Arabs had poets rich 
and luxuriant in their images and historians whose nar¬ 
ratives are naive. But they were chiefly successful in 
romances such as those known as “The Arabian 
Nights.” In philosophy they were followers of Aris¬ 
totle, whom they did not understand. Their greatest 
service to literature was in translating and preserving 
the work of the ancients. 

In science the Arabs were more successful than in 
literature. They borrowed Aristotle’s “Natural His¬ 
tory,” but they added much to it. They were excellent 
physicians, and Christian Princes went to Cordova to be 
healed. In abstract studies they were pre-eminent. 
They transmitted, if they did not invent, the numerals 
which replaced the clumsy Roman signs. The Arabic 
origin of algebra is indicated by its name. They trans¬ 
lated the works of the Greek geometricians and invented 
new problems in the science. They also studied trigo- 


3iS ANCIENT AND MEDIEVAL HISTORY 

nometry. They devoted themselves to astrology, which 
led them to astronomy, in which they were far in ad¬ 
vance of the rest of the world in their day. They 
studied geography from globes, and knew the annual 
movement of the equinoxes, and they estimated the cir¬ 
cumference of the earth at 26,000 miles. Chemistry 
owes its name and its beginnings to the Arabs, and 
pharmacy was developed by them. 

By the middle of the Eighth Century, then, the Visi¬ 
goths had long disappeared from history through the 
conquest of their Spanish Kingdom by the Saracens, 
and the transference of their African dominion, first to 
the Eastern Empire, and then to the Mohammedan Ca¬ 
liphs. In Italy, the Ostrogoths had disappeared before 
the revival of the power of the Eastern Empire there, 
and the incoming of the Lombards. A Frankish (Ger¬ 
man) Kingdom occupied Gaul and most of west and 
central Germany, and though for the sake of conveni¬ 
ence we have used the term “France,” there was as yet 
no “France” in our modern sense of the word, and we 
must regard the Princes of the Merovingian dynasty 
and the founders of the Carlovingian (Pepin of Heristal 
and Charles Martel) simply as “Kings of the Franks.” 
The Saracen Empire was the greatest in the world for 
power and extent, and the Eastern or Byzantine Empire 
included only the west of Asia Minor, Greece (to the 
Balkans), and part of Italy. The Slavonians were be¬ 
coming powerful between the Danube and the Baltic, 
and Mongolian (Tartar) tribes from Asia, called Bul¬ 
garians and Magyars, are found northwest and north of 
the Black Sea. The English are settled in their new 
home, and the Danes and the Norwegians (or North¬ 
men)—the flower of the Scandinavian branch of the 
Teutonic race—are beginning to be formidable pirates 


RISE OF THE SARACENS 


3*9 

in northwest Europe. We have now come to the epoch 
when the Roman Empire of the West was for a time 
revived by the great man who has been (to the confusion 
of many minds) called by the French name of Charle¬ 
magne, being in birth, and speech, and character, and 
ways, a thorough German. 


EMPIRE OF CHARLEMAGNE 


Karl or Charles the Great, son of Pepin the Short, 
King of the Franks, came to the throne in A. D. 
768 as joint King, but assumed sole rule in 771. 
He is one of the great men of history—distinguished as 
a soldier, a politician, and a man of intellectual taste and 
ability. He created a great and powerful monarchy out 
of the chaos of nations and institutions which he found 
existing around him, and though his Empire fell to 
pieces at his death, much of his work had a permanent 
effect, in that he created a solid Frankish dominion 
capable of maintaining itself generally against the 
hordes of Pagans and pirates, which threatened Chris¬ 
tian Europe from the East and North. Charlemagne* 
displayed a wonderful administrative power, and much 
wisdom, insight, and largeness of view as a legislator. 
He greatly promoted Christianity, law, order, and learn¬ 
ing, showing his ceaseless activity in the reform of the 
coinage, the founding of schools, the collection of 
libraries, the settlement even of religious disputes, and 
in attention to countless details of reform and adminis¬ 
tration which, after his death, showed that unsettled 
tribes had been turned into real, regular, and durable 
communities. The power of the Church was advanced 
by his enforcement of the regular payment of tithes 
throughout his dominions, and his assigning a place to 
Bishops and to Abbots, as well as to Dukes and to 
Counts, in the feudal system which had already virtually 
arisen. In the Frankish Empire of Charlemagne, Chris- 

*See Volume “World’s Famous Foreign Statesmen.” 

320 


EMPIRE OF CHARLEMAGNE 


321 


tianity was first consolidated into a political form pro¬ 
ceeding from itself, and the principle of hereditary mon¬ 
archy became established. 

The Pagan foes subdued by the Frankish arms under 
Karl the Great, were the Germanic and Tartar tribes to. 
the North and East of his inherited Kingdom. After 
many years of intermittent warfare he thoroughly con¬ 
quered the Saxons on the Weser and the Elbe, and 
forced them to embrace Christianity. He overcame 
the Tartar race called Avars, settled in the territory now 
called Hungary, and the whole of Germany was now for 
the first time united under one ruler. In Spain, he took 
from the Saracens the territory as far as the Ebro (A. D. 
778); it was in connection with this expedition that the 
legends arose about the famous hero Roland (the Or¬ 
lando of Italian poetry), and his exploits in the valley of 
Roncesvalles. In 773 the German King marched into 
Italy, to help Pope Adrian I against the attacks of the 
Lombards. Their King Desiderius was deposed, and 
Charlemagne was crowned King of Lombardy with the 
famous iron crown. On Christmas Day, A. D. 800, 
as he knelt on the steps of the altar at divine service in 
Rome, in the basilica of St. Peter, on the spot where now 
the great cathedral stands, Pope Leo III placed on the 
brow of Karl the Great the diadem of the Caesars, and 
saluted him as “Emperor of the West’’ by the title of 
Charles I, Caesar Augustus. Bryce in his “Holy Roman 
Empire,” says: “Modern history begins with this union, 
so long in preparation, so mighty in its consequences, of 
the Roman and the Teuton, of the memories and the 
civilization of the South with the fresh energy of the 
North.” Rome now became the capital of the Western 
Empire in the South, as Aachen (Aix-la-Chapelle) was 

in the north, and Italy and Rome were henceforth en¬ 
voi,. 1— 21 


322 ANCIENT AND MEDIAEVAL HISTORY 

tirely cut off from the Eastern Empire, whose capital 
was Constantinople. 

The great Charles made no effort to wield the des¬ 
potic rule of the old Roman Emperors. Each nation in 
his dominions was allowed to retain its own laws, hered¬ 
itary chiefs, and free assemblies, while the control of a 
central government over the different local functionaries 
and authorities was kept up by the despatch of royal 
commissioners from province to province as the sov¬ 
ereign’s representatives, to inspect, report, and reform. 

Charlemagne’s energy and activity were incessant 
and almost superhuman. Though almost every year 
found him engaged in some warlike expedition of delib¬ 
erate conquest, with a distinct and beneficial end in view 
for the furtherance of civilization and Christianity, he 
found time to attend to all sorts of matters belonging to 
the administration and improvement of his great Empire 
—public works of every kind, and the advancement of 
learning, even to the collection of ballads and old Frank¬ 
ish poems. He gathered men of letters round him from 
all quarters, including the English scholar Alcuin, who 
knew Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, and was Charle¬ 
magne’s chief instructor and adviser in literary affairs. 
Under his superintendence many schools were founded 
in connection with abbeys and monasteries, for the study 
of grammar, rhetoric, philosophy and science. 

Karl the Great was very tall and very strong; simple 
|and frugal in dress, habits, and mode of life; dignified, 
amiable, kind. One of his favorite modes of pastime 
and exercise was swimming, for which purpose he con¬ 
structed magnificent baths at Aachen, his capital. Here 
Charlemagne died in A. D. 814, after a reign of forty-three 
years. 

The Empire of Charles the Great extended over the 


EMPIRE OF CHARLEMAGNE 


3 3 3 

whole territory northeast from the Ebro to the Elbe, 
and west of a line drawn south from Hamburg to Ven¬ 
ice, including also, to east of that line, Bavaria, Bohemia, 
and most of Austria, except Hungary; in Italy it reached 
as far south as Gaeta. In other words, it included what 
is now the northeast of Spain, the whole of France and 
of northern and central Germany (except eastern Prus¬ 
sia), much of Austria, and all northern and central Italy* 
with the Island of Corsica. 

Charlemagne’s Empire bore only a fictitious resem¬ 
blance to the Empire he claimed to have restored. 
No doubt its unity was maintained by the formidable com 
queror’s iron hand, but it was badly secured by an inco¬ 
herent administration, that was but a confused imitation 
of the ingenious mechanism of the Roman. The differ¬ 
ent nationalities of which the Empire was composed had 
submitted to the ascendency of the Franks, but the latter 
were too few in number to assimilate the conquered 
nations, even had they thought of doing so. By placing 
Frank counts in Italy on the marches (frontiers) of Spain, 
the Elbe and the Danube, and in the valley of the Main, 
Charlemagne aimed only at insuring obedience. To main¬ 
tain authority over these turbulent, bellicose populations 
required a succession of Charlemagnes. Pepin’s family 
seemed exhausted and the Empire of Charlemagne lasted 
only during his life. Many other causes contributed to 
the dissolution of the Empire that outwardly seemed so 
strong. But though it fell, its effects remained. Charle¬ 
magne would not occupy the place in history that poster¬ 
ity has accorded to him if he had been only a successful 
conqueror. Charlemagne created Germany and be¬ 
queathed to its ruler the title of Roman Emperor. Charle¬ 
magne disciplined the new populations who settled in the 
Empire, forced them to adopt agricultural life; and 


324 ANCIENT AND MEDIAEVAL HISTORY 


throughout central Europe he planted bishoprics and 
abbeys that became the centers of civilization. In a word 
his powerful hands kneaded together the materials of mod¬ 
ern Europe. His Empire was dismembered, but the pieces 
formed nations, the development of which Astonishes us 


even now. 


BEGINNINGS OF MODERN NATIONS 

Charles the Great’s son, Louis le Debonnaire (“the 
gentle”), became the second Frankish Emperor, but had 
not the force of character necessary to maintain a posi¬ 
tion so difficult, and even during his lifetime parts of the 
Empire were lost to him. The truth was that a reaction 
was taking place, on the part of particular nationalities, 
against the universal sovereignty of the Franks, and, after 
much contention among* the three sons of Louis, the Em¬ 
pire was divided, in A. D. 843, by the Treaty of Verdun. 
The name of the King of the central and southern portion 
(Lothar) survives in the province of Lorraine (in Ger¬ 
man, Lothringen). The eastern and western parts cor¬ 
respond roughly to modern Germany and France. 

There were frequent changes of boundary by which 
the Kingdoms formed began gradually to roughly corre¬ 
spond to real divisions of language and nations. By the 
year 930 the Kingdom of Burgundy had arisen, including 
what is now Switzerland and the southeast of France, with 
the capital at Arles; about 1030 this State became part of 
the German Empire. A Duchy of Burgundy, correspond¬ 
ing nearly to the modern French province, continued inde¬ 
pendent or semi-independent till the Seventeenth Century. 

In 887 a final separation took place between the King¬ 
doms of the East and West Franks, answering to Germany 
and France. Germany first became great under the Saxon 
line of Kings, and afterward Emperors, beginning in 
A. D. 918 with Henry I, or Henry the Fowler, elected 
to be King by certain German Princes. He was a prudent 
and active ruler, who forced Suabia, Bavaria, and Lor- 

325 


326 ANCIENT AND MEDIAEVAL HISTORY 

raine to submit, and fought with great success against the 
Magyars or Hungarians, who were striving to make their 
way into Germany from the East. His son Otto (or Otho) 
the Great, ruled from 936 to 973, and was a brave, honest, 
and able monarch. Under him the Western (Roman or 
German) Empire was restored in a new form, by which it 
was attached to the chief Frankish Kingdom (which Ger* 
many had now become), so that whoever was chosen, by 
the Princes of Germany, King of Germany, had alone a 
right to the title of Emperor. By marriage with the 
King of Italy’s widow, Otho became King of Lombardy 
in 951; he was crowned Emperor by the Pope in 962. 
This line of Emperors, the Saxon, ended in A. D. 1024. 

Under Conrad II, who began the line of Franconian 
Emperors, so called because its Princes belonged to Fran¬ 
conia or Eastern Francia, the eastern or German part of 
the old Kingdom of the Franks, the Kingdom of Burgundy 
was annexed to the Empire. Conrad’s son, Henry III, 
reigned from A. D. 1039 to 1056, and was one of the great¬ 
est of the German sovereigns—bold energetic, and 
enlightened. He did much to maintain order and religion 
both in Italy and Germany, assuming great authority in 
the appointment and control of the Popes, and keeping 
down the great feudal nobles of his realm. Henry III 
also promoted art, science, and literature, founding many 
schools in connection with the monasteries. Under his 
successors, serious and frequent quarrels arose between 
Popes and Emperors, causing great disorders of rebellion 
and civil war in Italy and Germany. It was Henry IV 
of Germany who was compelled, by excommunication 
absolving his subjects from allegiance, to submit to the 
famous Pope Hildebrand, Gregory VII * in 1077. The 
Emperor went to see Gregory in his residence at the 

♦ See volume “World’9 Famous Foreign Statesmen.” 


BEGINNINGS OF MODERN NATIONS 327 

mountain castle of Canossa, near Modena, in north Italy, 
and was only admitted to an audience after waiting in the 
courtyard for three successive days in the depth of winter, 
clad in a penitential dress. This famous episode has made 
“going to Canossa” a proverbial phrase for abject submis¬ 
sion to a powerful foe. The Franconian line of Emperors 
ended in A. D. 1125. 

The Carlovingian dynasty in France, or Karlings, the 
proper German name of these Frankish Kings, ruled dur¬ 
ing part of the time between A. D. 750 and 980, their 
tenure being interrupted by the election to power, as Duke 
of France, in 887, of Eudes, or Odo, whose family may 
be looked upon as French, since they spoke an early form 
of the Romance language thus called. The capital of this 
Duchy of France was Paris, and the power of its rulers did 
not extend south of the Loire. At this period, Ninth and 
Tenth centuries, in what we now call France the territory 
and rule were divided amongst a number of independent 
or quasi-independent Dukes and Counts, such as the Dukes 
of Guienne or Aquitaine and of Gascony in the south; the 
Duke of Burgundy in the east, with his capital at Dijon; 
the Count of Toulouse in the south; the Count of Flanders 
in the north; the Duke of Brittany in the northwest, and 
the Duke of Normandy in the north. 

At last, in A. D. 987, an end came to this perplexing 
record and to the Carlovingian dynasty, by the election as 
King of France of Hugh Capet, whose dynasty ruled for 
nearly 350 years, and whose descendants, except during 
revolutionary and Napoleonic periods, were Kings of 
France till 1848. With Hugh Capet, then, in 987 begins 
a Kingdom of France with Paris as its capital, destined to 
grow to its full size and strength by the reduction of the 
power of the petty sovereigns and feudal lords. Capet, 
eldest son of a Duke of France, was chosen King by the 


328 ANCIENT AND MEDIEVAL HISTORY 

great feudal lords, and the power which he possessed was 
simply that of a feudal superior. The barons were con¬ 
stantly engaged in wars with each other and in oppression 
of the peasantry, and the influence of the church was bene¬ 
ficially used in some quarters by causing the conclusion of 
a “God’s peace” or “Truce of God,” prohibiting all war¬ 
fare and tyranny. 

About the middle of the Tenth Century, Otho of 
Germany had become King of northern Italy. The 
south of Italy still belonged to the Byzantine (Eastern) 
Empire. The temporal power of the Popes had become 
established in central Italy. About the middle of the 
Eleventh Century the Normans conquered Apulia, in the 
southeast of Italy, and also Sicily, under the leadership 
of Robert Guiscard, so that the Eastern Empire lost 
most of its Italian possessions. 

In Spain the Saracens gradually lost power by 
divisions amongst themselves, and the Christians began 
to gain ground. In the north a Christian Kingdom, 
that of Navarre, had risen about A. D. 843. In 1031 
the Western Caliphate came to an end, and the Saracen 
dominion in Spain was cut up into several small States. 
The Spanish Kingdoms of Aragon, Castile, Leon, and 
Asturias were founded in the Eleventh Century, and 
these successes caused the Saracens to call in the aid of 
the Moors from Africa, and the Moorish Kingdom in 
southern Spain maintained the Mohammedan cause 
firmly for some time longer. 

From the south inroads were made by the Magyars, 
or Hungarians. This people, of Asiatic origin, became 
Christianized and settled in a Kingdom still bearing 
their name, before the end of the Tenth Century. To 
the north of them Slavonic States were founded in 
Bohemia and Poland, and a Duchy of Austria arose as 






CHARLES THE BOLD’S FLIGHT AFTER THE BATTLE OF MORAT 

Painting by E. Burnand 





BEGINNINGS OF MODERN NATIONS 329 

a border State between Germany and the Hungarians. 
Before the Eleventh Century Russia, under her King 
Vladimir, had made a beginning in Christianity and civ¬ 
ilization, derived from intercourse with the Byzantine 
Empire. 

Of the three invasions from the north, south, and 
east which brought about the dissolution of the Carlov- 
ingian Empire, that of the Northmen has been the most 
important in its effect upon history. They were the 
dwellers in Scandinavia and on the northern Baltic 
coasts. All the territories now called Denmark, Sweden, 
and Norway supplied these dreaded invaders, but Eng¬ 
land was chiefly assailed by men from Denmark, while 
the Norwegians made their descent on France, Scotland, 
and Ireland. The Danes were closely allied to the Eng¬ 
lish and Saxons. They were sea-warriors and pirates, 
distinguished by strength, courage, merciless ferocity, 
and hatred of the Christian name and religion. Eng¬ 
land was the chief sufferer, because of her exposed posi¬ 
tion west of the North Sea, nor was any part of the land 
so far distant from the sea as to be secure from attack. 
The Northmen had pillaged the coasts of France even 
during the lifetime of the great Charles, and once in the 
south of his Empire, as he gazed from a port on the 
Mediterranean upon some Norman cruisers, he had 
shed prophetic tears over the coming fate of his peo¬ 
ples. These formidable foes, destined to make two 
successive conquests of England, came at first only for 
pillage, to the estuaries of France and the British isles. 
In a few years the Dane, or Northman, came to both 
lands for territory, and his efforts were crowned with 
success. The great point of difference between the in¬ 
vaded and the invaders lay in the maritime skill of the 
Danes. It is believed that the younger sons of the 


33 ° ANCIENT AND MEDIAEVAL HISTORY 


Scandinavian chiefs were driven to sea robbery for a 
livelihood by the law of primogeniture, under which 
the eldest son inherited all of the property. The term 
King, or Viking (applied to the leaders of the pirates 
or to the whole body), means men of the bays and creeks, 
in reference to the countless fiords or inlets on the west 
coast of Norway. The English had by this time, in 
their devotion to a life of tillage and pasture, lost their 
olden love for maritime pursuits, and were thus unpre¬ 
pared with a fleet to meet their foes on the seas. The 
French had never had any maritime skill. The pirates 
bore as their national flag the effigy of a black raven 
woven on a blood-red ground, and were armed with 
long, heavy swords and battle-axes of formidable keen¬ 
ness and weight. The Northmen kept both to the wor¬ 
ship of Odin and their life of roving and robbery, and 
had great contempt for those who tilled the soil and had 
adopted the worship of the Christian God. 

The first footholds upon foreign soil secured by the 
Northmen were to the south of the continent, where 
they met less resistance than they had received in Eng¬ 
land and Scotland. They seized the Walcheren Islands 
at the mouth of the Scheldt, Betau in the Rhine, the 
Wahal and the Lech in the Seine, and Noirmoutier at 
the mouth of the Loire. In 840 they burned Rouen 
and in 843 they sacked Nantes, Saintes, and Bordeaux 
and entered the Mediterranean. They besieged the 
walls of Paris repeatedly, once at a memorable siege in 
885, and sacked Tours, Orleans, and Toulouse. They 
ascended the Rhine and the Meuse in 851 and devas¬ 
tated their shores. Then a royal edict ordered the 
Counts and vassals of the King to repair old castles and 
build new ones, and soon the country was fortified 
and the invaders, halted at each point, wished to settle 


BEGINNINGS OF MODERN NATIONS 331 


in some place secure and arable, rather than continue 
the warfare. Neustria was given them in 911. Their 
devastations, continuing for three-fourths of a century, 
had prepared for the rise of feudalism. 

The Northmen robbed France and the Netherlands 
of both safety and a part of their wealth. In England 
they took away independence as well. The Saxon 
heptarchy in 827 was a single monarchy under Egbert 
the Great, who repulsed the first Danes attacking his 
shores. After his reign the Danes occupied North¬ 
umberland, East Anglia, and Mercia. For seven years 
Alfred the Great, on the throne of Wessex, carried on 
a deadly struggle with the entrenched Danes, and at 
length concluded a treaty of partition at the peace of 
Wedmore (878), surrendering to the Danes the north 
and east of England, to be held by them as vassals of 
the Saxon King. The supremacy of Wessex was thus 
secured and ripened in the following reigns into some¬ 
thing like imperial authority. The main features of the 
organization given the Kingdom by Alfred have been 
preserved. These are: division of the country into 
counties; justice rendered by twelve—a jury of twelve 
freeholders; general affairs decided by the Witenage* 
mot, an assemblage of wise men aided by a King, half 
hereditary and half elective. The development of the 
power of the English King was such that Edward the 
Elder was recognized not only as overlord of Mercia 
and Northumbria, but the Welsh Kings swore allegiance 
and the Kings of Scotland and Strathclyde acknow¬ 
ledged him as their father and lord. Edward treated 
on equal terms and contracted alliances with the great¬ 
est Princes in Europe. Under Athelstan the Saxon 
monarchy was at the height of its power; it was he who 
dealt a death-blow to all opponents by the battle of 


332 ANCIENT AND MEDIAEVAL HISTORY 

Brunanburg in 937 and drove the Danes from England. 
But they soon returned under the leadership of Olaf, 
King of Norway, and Sweyn, King of Denmark, who 
carried away enormous booty. Gold not succeeding 
in buying them off, Ethelred attempted a vast counter¬ 
plot. All the Danes in England were massacred on 
St. Brice’s Day (1002). Sweyn avenged his compatriots 
by dethroning Ethelred, and in 1013 he assumed the 
title of King of England. Edmund II, known as Iron¬ 
sides, renewed the struggle against Canute heroically 
but futilely (1017). Gradually all of the country sub¬ 
mitted to the rule of the Danes. At first Canute was 
cruel, but became a milder monarch, and by marrying 
Emma, widow of Ethelred, he united conquerers and 
conquered. He made wise laws or restored those of 
Alfred the Great, prevented the Danes from oppressing 
the English, sent Saxon missionaries to Scandinavia to 
aid in the fall of decadent paganism, and in 1027 made 
a pilgrimage to Rome, where he promised in the name 
of England to pay an annual tax, known as St. Peter’s 
pence, annually to the Pope. 

Thus in France the Northmen had taken only a 
province. In England they took a Kingdom. For the 
rest on both sides of the channel these robbers showed 
the same aptitude for civilization, and these ferocious 
pagans became excellent Christians. In Normandy, 
Rollo made a severe judge, and Canute deserved the name 
of Great. 


GROWTH OF THE PAPAL POWER 


We have seen how Christianity became the religion 
of the Roman Empire. The Catholic Church in the 
Western Empire had for its head the Bishop of Rome, 
to whose authority disputants appealed for decision, and 
oppressed persons for advocacy and protection. This 
influential position of the hierarch of Rome grew by 
degrees into a spiritual ascendency unequaled in the 
history of the world, and still flourishing in full vigor. 
Macaulay has declared that “there is not, and there never 
was on this earth, a work of human policy so well de¬ 
serving of examination as the Roman Catholic Church. 
The history of that church joins together the two great 
ages of human civilization. No other institution is left 
standing which carries the mind back to the times when 
the smoke of sacrifice rose from the Pantheon, and when 
camelopards and tigers bounded in the Flavian amphi¬ 
theater. . . . The Church of Rome saw the com¬ 

mencement of all the governments and of all the eccle¬ 
siastical establishments that now exist in the world, and 
we feel no assurance that she is not destined to see the 
end of them all. She was great and respected before 
the Saxon had set foot in Britain, before the Frank had 
passed the Rhine, when Grecian eloquence still flour¬ 
ished in Antioch, when idols were still worshiped in the 
temple of Mecca.” 

It was the fall of the Western Empire that first gave 
a virtually political standing to the Bishop of Rome. A 
decree of the Emperor Valentinian III in A. D. 445 had 
acknowledged the Bishop of Rome as primate, and as 

333 


334 ANCIENT AND MEDIAEVAL HISTORY 

the last tribunal of appeal from the other bishops, 
though the Eastern Church always resisted this claim of 
the See of Rome. Still the Bishop of Rome was the 
leading personage in that city which had been the capi¬ 
tal of the world, and when, under Justinian, the Eastern 
Empire gained dominion over Italy, the seat of govern¬ 
ment was not at Rome, but at Ravenna, and the moral 
influence of the Roman Bishop continued to grow. 

From the title Pontifex Maximus (the chief official 
of the old Pagan religion of Rome) he came to be called 
Pontiff; while the word Pope is derived from Papa, 
‘‘Father/’being appropriated to the Roman Pontiff (hav¬ 
ing previously been given to all bishops) by a decree of 
Gregory VII (Pope 1073-1085) with the prefixed epithet 
sanctus, “holy,” whence the modern phrase “His Holi¬ 
ness the Pope.” The spiritual authority of the Popes 
was increased in the establishment of new churches in 
Britain and Germany by missionaries sent forth from 
Rome, and both the spiritual and political influence of 
the See grew through the personal ascendency of such 
Popes as Leo the Great in the Fifth Century, the zeal¬ 
ous, good, and able Gregory the Great in the Sixth, and 
Leo III in the Eighth. 

The temporal power of the Papacy really began 
about the middle of the Eighth Century, when Pepin 
the Short (son of Charles Martel) was crowned “King 
of the Franks,” or “King of Francia,” by Pope Stephen 
III in 753. Pepin, on his side, helped the Pope against 
the Lombards, and, after checking the progress of their 
arms, bestowed on the Pope the territory known as the 
Exarchate of Ravenna, exarch having been the title 
given by Justinian to the official who governed central 
Italy as a province of the Eastern Empire. This trans¬ 
action, which founded the temporal authority of the 


GROWTH OF THE PAPAL POWER 


335 


Church of Rome, is famous in history as the “Donation 
of Pepin.” This gift of Pepin’s was confirmed to the 
Popes by his son Charles the Great, who overthrew the 
Lombard Kingdom in Italy, and was crowned King of 
Italy and then Emperor of the West in A. D. 800. 

During the period of confusion which followed the 
death of the great Karl, the power of the Papacy was 
growing, and the Popes exercised a great influence in 
political affairs, especially through the spiritual terrors 
of excommunication which they wielded against sov¬ 
ereigns and their subjects. In 865 Pope Nicholas I en¬ 
forced an edict, in a matter of divorce, against Lothaire, 
King of Lorraine; in 875 Pope John VIII, in conferring 
the imperial crown on Charles the Bald, made him 
acknowledge the independence of the Roman See. A 
period of weakness and anarchy for the Papacy followed, 
owing to the violence of feudal lords in Italy, who 
appointed and deposed Popes at will. The Emperor 
Otho the Great (ruled 936 to 973) put the imperial 
power for a time above the Papal by deposing Pope 
John XII, causing his successor Leo VIII to swear 
obedience and fidelity, and putting down effectually the 
resistance made by the Roman nobility and clergy. At 
a later period the Popes asserted themselves with suc¬ 
cess against the Emperors, and after many bitter dis¬ 
putes and fluctuations of superiority from Pope to 
Emperor and Emperor to Pope, a crisis came in the 
papacy of the famous Hildebrand, who became Pope 
Gregory VII in A. D. 1073. 

Gregory VII was one of the greatest men of the 
Middle Ages, and the greatest Pope in the history of 
the See of Rome. It was the chief object of his life to 
make the ecclesiastical power entirely independent of 
the temporal. Of humble birth, by his ability and 


336 ANCIENT AND MEDIAEVAL HISTORY 

energy he rose to be Cardinal in 1049. From this time 
Hildebrand was the ruling spirit of the papacy. Under 
Pope Nicholas II (1058-1061) he brought about a 
change in the mode of election of the Pontiffs, so that 
the cardinals alone could nominate, and the clergy and 
people of Rome were deprived of their votes. When 
Cardinal Hildebrand became Pope Gregory VII in 1073, 
he set to work at carrying out his idea of a theocracy in 
which the Pope should be the chief temporal, as well as 
ecclesiastical, ruler of the world. In order to concen¬ 
trate the energies of the clergy upon their sacred duties 
and the interests of the church, he prohibited the mar¬ 
riage of priests. He then took from the sovereign 
Princes their right of investiture—that is, the right of 
investing with their offices the higher clergy in their 
dominions—the right of conferring the title and the 
church lands upon bishops and abbots, by the giving of 
a crozier and a ring. 

This latter decree (issued in 1075) at once brought 
Gregory VII into conflict with the Emperor Henry 
IV of Germany. Henry supported several German 
bishops whom Gregory had deposed, and was sum¬ 
moned to appear before a council at Rome. Henry 
called a council at Worms and had a sentence of depo¬ 
sition passed against Gregory, who retorted by excom¬ 
municating the Emperor, and releasing his subjects 
and vassals from their oath of allegiance. Henry IV 
found himself helpless, and in 1077 made his humiliat¬ 
ing submission at Canossa. The Emperor’s friends 
then gained the upper hand, and Gregory, driven from 
Rome, died at Salerno in 1085. 

The quarrel about investitures—really involving the 
right of temporal sovereigns to be supreme in ecclesi¬ 
astical appointments within their own dominions—long 


GROWTH OF THE PAPAL POWER 


337 


survived both Gregory and Henry, and, as far as Ger¬ 
many was concerned, ended in 1122 by the Emperor 
Henry V surrendering his claim of investiture to the 
Pope, so far as the ecclesiastical office was concerned, 
while the bishops were to receive the temporalities 
(church lands and revenues) from the hands of the Em¬ 
peror as the feudal superior. The history of England 
contains one of these Papal claims in the quarrel 
between Pope Innocent III and King John. As usual 
in these conflicts between the higher powers, it was the 
people who suffered. The minor Princes of the Empire 
and their feudal subjects were distracted between their 
civil duty to the Emperor and their religious fear of the 
Pope, and, after infinite disorder and suffering, neither 
side was really victor in a strife which, if a wise discrimi¬ 
nation had been exercised, would never have begun. 
Innocent III (Pope 1198-1216) is held to have made 
the Papacy more powerful than at any other time. He 
constituted himself feudal lord of Rome and the sur¬ 
rounding territory; and, in compelling the submission of 
John of England, showed forth the See of Rome as 
possessed of a supreme sovereignty. 

The crusade against the heretics called Albigenses 
is a striking proof of the power wielded by the Popes 
in that age. Toward the close of the Twelfth Century 
a sect of early Protestants existed in the County of 
Toulouse. They were called Albigenses, from the town 
of Alby, northeast of the city of Toulouse. The region 
in which they dwelt was at that time the most civilized 
and flourishing part of western Europe, the fruitful and 
well-cultivated Languedoc, abounding in corn fields and 
vineyards, rich cities, and stately castles. The civiliza¬ 
tion of Languedoc was distinguished by freedom oi 
thought, which permitted friendly intercourse with the 

VOL. I — 22 


338 ANCIENT AND MEDIEVAL HISTORY 

Moors of Spain, and brought to the north of the Pyre¬ 
nees the mathematical and medical science of the schools 
of Granada and Cordova. A flourishing trade was car¬ 
ried on by merchants from the Eastern Empire at 
Toulouse and at Narbonne, and these traders appear to 
have introduced, along with their wares, doctrines re¬ 
sembling those of modern Protestantism, and regarded 
as deadly heresy by the Papal See. Pope Innocent III 
resolved to meet the evil with the sword, and called the 
warriors of northern France to his aid. The Spanish 
monk Dominic (the famous founder of the order of the 
Dominicans) was employed to preach a “crusade” 
against the Albigenses, and Simon de Montfort (father 
of the great Earl of Leicester) headed the expedition 
against the heretics. Raymond VI, Count of Tou¬ 
louse, refused at first to join in the extirpation of heresy 
by the slaughter of his best subjects, but was induced 
to submit and to take part in the attack upon the strong¬ 
holds of the new faith. The war began in 1209; town 
after town was taken and burnt by the crusaders, and 
fire and slaughter sped throughout the land. Peace 
was not made until 1229, when heresy was extinguished 
by the killing of nearly all the heretics, and the power 
of the feudal lords in that region was ended by annexa¬ 
tion to the dominions of the crown of France. 

It was in connection with these events that the fa¬ 
mous Inquisition had its rise, the institution being 
started by Innocent III and St. Dominic, for the seeking 
our of adherents of false doctrines. The Dominican and 
Franciscan monks were the first instruments employed 
for this purpose. The power of the Papacy reached its 
height during the two generations which followed Jhe 
Albigensian crusade. 


THE CRUSADES 


During two hundred years—including the whole of 
the Twelfth and the Thirteenth centuries—European 
history is greatly concerned with the series of expedi¬ 
tions known as the Crusades. The word crusade means 
“war of the cross/’ from the French croisade (Provencal* 
crozada, from croz, Latin crux, a cross). The main 
object of the enterprise thus undertaken by the western 
nations of Europe was to recover the Holy Land—Pal¬ 
estine—from the Saracens and Turks. A craving seems 
to have arisen in Christendom at the end of the Eleventh 
Century, for the possession of those sacred places in 
Palestine where Christ, whose vicar on earth the Pope 
claimed and was held to be, might be regarded as more 
especially present to believers. Pilgrims in crowds had 
resorted to those holy places, but the hallowed spots 
themselves were in the hands of infidels, and it was felt 
as a reproach to Christendom that the sepulcher of 
Christ, in particular, was not in possession of the church. 
We must, as a preliminary to some account of the Cru¬ 
sades, glance at the position of the Eastern Empire and 
of the Mohammedans in the East at this time. 

Toward the end of the Ninth Century much of its 
former power was recovered by the Eastern Empire under 
Emperors of the Macedonian or Basilian dynasty, founded 
in 867 by Basilius, a Macedonian of low birth and great 
ability, who had worked his way to the throne by a series 
of crimes. The city of Antioch and other important 
places were recovered from the now divided Saracens, and 
a large part of the west of Asia was again under the con¬ 
trol of the Emperors at Constantinople. 

339 


34 o ANCIENT AND MEDI/EVAL HISTORY 

A change came in the middle of the Eleventh Century, 
when the Turks, under the rule of the house of Seljuk, 
began to be formidable. A conqueror named Alp Arslan, 
leader of the Seljukian Turks, defeated the Byzantine 
forces in 1071 at the battle of Manzikert so decisively, as 
to become master of most of Asia Minor. Here, in 1092, 
was established the Sultanate of Roum (Rome), with its 
capital first at Nicaea in Bithynia, and then at Iconium. 
The seat of the Seljukian dynasty of Roum w r as thus 
planted only 100 miles from Constantinople, and the divin¬ 
ity of Christ was denied and derided in the same temple 
in which it had been solemnly declared by the First General 
Council (of Nice, whence our Nicene creed) of the Catho¬ 
lic Church. The Christian city of Antioch was soon after¬ 
ward betrayed to the Mohammedans, and a still more im¬ 
portant acquisition of the Seljukian Turks was to follow. 
This was the conquest of Syria and Palestine from the 
Caliph who had ruled there with mildness and tolerance, 
and the holy city of Jerusalem now r fell into the hands of 
those who insulted the resident Christian clergy and the 
faith of the Western world. At this, as Gibbon says (now 
that “a new spirit had arisen of religious chivalry and 
papal dominion”), “ a nerve w r as touched of exquisite feel¬ 
ing, and the sensation vibrated to the heart of Europe.” 

A French monk of Amiens, famous forevermore as 
“Peter the Hermit,” kindled the scattered sparks of reli¬ 
gious and chivalric enthusiasm into a wide-spread raging 
flame. This man, like St. Paul, was of small stature and 
contemptible presence, but he had a fiery eye and 
vehement speech, well fitted to rouse mankind to action. 
He went to Jerusalem a pilgrim; he saw the state of the 
Holy City; he felt the cruel treatment of the Turks; he 
returned to Europe a complete and irrepressible fanatic. 

Pope Urban the Second encouraged Peter in his pro- 


THE CRUSADES 


34 1 

ject of delivering the Holy Land, and the hermit sped 
through Italy and France, everywhere preaching a crusade 
for the rescue of the sepulchre of Christ from the hands 
of the infidels. With head bare, feet naked, and lean body 
clad in coarsest robe, riding an ass, and bearing a massive 
crucifix, he preached to crowds in streets and highways, 
calling all to repentance and to arms. He was welcome 
alike to castle and to cottage; his picture of the pilgrims’ 
woes melted all souls to pity and filled all eyes with tears 
or hearts with wrath. The ready fuel of religious zeal 
was soon everywhere kindled—the time of the Crusades, 
in a word, had fully come. The feudal warriors of the age 
were eager to draw the sword for the defense of their 
brethren in Palestine and the rescue of their Savior’s tomb 
from desecration; and all that was now needed was to 
organize and direct the mighty force which had been called 
forth to battle with the infidels in the distant East. 

At the end of the year 1095 the Pope (Urban II)sum¬ 
moned a great council at Clermont, in the south of France. 
This was attended by the Cardinals, hundreds of Prelates, 
and a great train of lords and knights, whom the Pope 
addressed in a stirring speech, which found an instant 
response. When from the thousands of hearers the cry 
arose “God wills it,” uttered in the corrupted Latin (Dieux 
el volt and Deus lo volt) of Northern and Provencal 
France, the orator cried out, “It is indeed the will of God, 
and let this memorable word be forever adopted as your 
cry of battle to animate the devotion and courage of the 
champions of Christ. His cross is the symbol of your 
salvation; wear it, a red, a bloody cross, as an external 
mark on your breasts or shoulders, as a pledge of your 
sacred and irrevocable engagement.” The suggestion 
was adopted, and the red cross of the Crusaders was soon 
everywhere seen. The time for the starting of the great 


342 ANCIENT AND MEDIAEVAL HISTORY 


expedition to the East was fixed for the festival of the 
Assumption—August 15th in the following year, A. D. 
1096. 

At the Council of Clermont, Pope Urban II had pro¬ 
claimed for those who should enlist under the banner of 
,the Cross forgiveness of all sins, and a full freedom from 
lall penances due to the church. War and enterprise being 
the prevailing passions of the age, the people were now 
enjoined, as a penance, to gratify those passions, to visit 
distant lands, and to draw their swords against the nations 
of the East. 

The impatience of the ruder classes anticipated the 
appointed time, and in the early spring of A. D. 1096, 
nearly 250,000 pilgrims, including men, women and chil¬ 
dren, gathered round Peter the Hermit in the east of 
France, and called upon him to take the command. Before 
sweeping through Germany along the banks of the Rhine 
and Danube, this horde of fanatics and ruffians attacked 
the colonies of wealthy Jews in the trading towns on the 
Moselle and the Rhine. This roused against them the 
native ferocity of the Hungarians and Bulgarians, and 
only a remnant of the whole body crossed the Bosphorus 
at Constantinople, and that to be destroyed by the Turks 
of Asia Minor. Hundreds of thousands of persons had 
thus perished without the slightest result as to the real 
object of the Crusade. 

The practical Crusaders were of a very different class, 
and went to work after due and careful preparations. 
None of the great sovereigns of Europe took part in this 
First Crusade. The leaders were the feudal princes of 
the second order. The first rank both in war and council 
is to be given to the famous hero Godfrey of Bouillon. 
This brave and accomplished soldier was a descendant of 
Charles the Great in the female line, and was a worthy 


THE CRUSADES 


343 


representative of such an ancestor. His valor was tem¬ 
pered by prudence. His piety was sincere; his life virtu¬ 
ous; his aim, in joining the expedition, single and disinter¬ 
ested. His character and fame brought under his ban¬ 
ners, from France, Lorraine, and Germany, an army of 
80,000 foot and 10,000 horse. 

Among the other chiefs were Robert, Duke of Nor¬ 
mandy, Count Hugh of Vermandois (in French Flan¬ 
ders), Count Robert of Flanders, and Stephen, Count of 
Chartres. These were the leaders of the French, the 
Normans, and some Crusaders from the British Isles. 
Count Raymond of Toulouse headed an army of 100,000 
horse and foot from Languedoc, Provence, Burgundy, and 
Lombardy. From Southern Italy Bohemond, son of the 
famous Norman chief Robert Guiscard, Duke of Apulia, 
ed 10,000 horse and 20,000 foot, and that model of Chris¬ 
tian knighthood, the great Tancred, the hero of Tasso’s 
poem Gerusalemme Liberata (“Jerusalem Delivered”), 
accompanied his cousin Bohemond. In all, six armies, 
numbering 600,000 men, started by different routes for 
Constantinople. 

After various obstacles, and losses by land and sea, 
and difficulties with the Greek Emperor Alexius Coinne- 
nus, who feared for himself as to the possible doings of 
the Western Princes, a great host of Crusaders arrived in 
Asia Minor in the spring of 1097. The main strength of 
the army consisted in the mail-clad horsemen, said to have 
numbered 100,000—the flower of European chivalry, 
knights, esquires, and men-at-arms, protected by helmet 
and shield, and chain and scale-armor, and armed with 
lance, sword, battle-axe, and heavy mace or club. The| 
footmen consisted chiefly of archers, provided with the 
long bow and the cross-bow. The body of cavalry, on 
which the Crusaders relied to overcome the Turks, was of 


344 ANCIENT AND MEDIEVAL HISTORY 


the most formidable force and the most splendid appear¬ 
ance. The horses were of a large and heavy breed, and 
when the rider, fixing his long lance in the rest, spurred 
his steed onward at full pace, the light Eastern horse could 
not stand against the weight of such a charge. The fol¬ 
lowers of each feudal chieftain were distinguished by his 
banner, his armorial coat, and his special war-cry, and the 
armor of the leaders was bright with gold, gems, and color. 

The first work of the Crusaders was to attack the Turk¬ 
ish capital, Nice, or Nicaea (Nikaia), in the northwest of 
Asia Minor. The Turkish Sultan, Soliman, kept watch 
from the hills with a large force of cavalry, while the Cru¬ 
saders for seven weeks (May and June, 1097) assailed the 
town with the old Roman engines and methods—the bat¬ 
tering-ram and mine, movable tower, catapult, balista, and 
sling—with the more modern inventions of artificial fire 
and the cross-bow. The famous Greek fire was a com¬ 
position invented by a Greek in the Seventh Century A. 
D. It was used, wrapped in flax, attached to arrows and 
javelins, to fire buildings, and was very difficult to extin¬ 
guish. When Nice was fully invested by the Crusaders, 
the city surrendered to the Greek Emperor, Alexius, who 
treated the infidels with a generosity displeasing to the 
fanatical Crusaders. 

When the invading army began its march southeast¬ 
ward through Asia Minor, on its way to the Syrian fron¬ 
tier, Soliman called round him all his allies, and attacked 
the Crusaders with an immense force of his light cavalry, 
armed with the javelin, the crooked sabre, and the long 
Tartar bow. The battle of Dorylseum, in Phrygia, fought 
in July, 1097, ended at last, after a great effort of valor 
on both sides, in the complete defeat of the infidels. The 
weight of the Crusaders’ horses and equipments was more 
than a match for Asiatic quickness and skill, and the re- 


SreN# 



TIIE CRUSADES—THE TRIUMPH OF THE CROSS 
Painting by M. S. M. Sedano 







THE CRUSADES 


345 


suits of the victory were the taking of Soliman’s camp with 
a great booty, and his abandonment of the Kingdom of 
Roum, leaving the way open into Syria. 

Retreating before the advancing columns of Crusad¬ 
ers, Soliman laid all the country waste, so that the invad¬ 
ers, as they passed through Phrygia, Pisidia, and Pam- 
phylia, suffered fearfully from hunger, thirst, and toil. 
They thus lost thousands of the men as well as a large 
part of the horses which bore the mail-clad warriors, 
forced now to stagger onward on unwonted weary feet. 

The Crusaders at last arrived (October, 1097) before 
the city of Antioch, the great and populous capital of 
Syria, defended by the river Orontes, by marshes, hilly 
ground, and a solid stately wall. For seven months the 
place was beleaguered in vain by the crusading host, desti¬ 
tute alike of the implements and of the skill for besieging 
(which at Nicaea had been supplied by the Greek Emper¬ 
or’s assistance), and the losses of the army by desertion, 
famine, and fatigue were very serious. Their cavalry 
had almost disappeared from loss of horses, and little 
progress had been made in the enterprise, when Bohemond 
the Norman managed to effect an entrance by surprise, 
assisted by treachery within the walls. Antioch was taken 
thus one dark and stormy night in June, 1098. 

The captors of Antioch were then besieged in turn by 
a great host of infidels dispatched to aid the cause of Islam 
by a Persian Sultan. Famine within the walls was rife, 
for the Crusaders, in spite of their religious aims, had lived 
for months outside the walls in luxury and waste and riot, 
expiated now by pestilence and hunger. Despair at last 
gave strength to starved and sickly men, and superstition 
lent her aid in the opportune discovery, within the walls of 
Antioch, of the famous Holy Lance, a spear-head stated to 
be that which pierced the side of Christ. With this sacred 


346 ANCIENT AND MEDIAEVAL HISTORY 


relic in their midst, and headed by the truly noble Godfrey 
of Bouillon, the chivalrous Tancred, and the brave and 
able, if ambitious, Bohemond, the Crusaders made a sortie, 
and by determined fighting drove the besiegers from the 
ground, and cleared the way for a march upon the holy 
city. 

The hundreds of thousands of invading Christians who 
had been present at the siege of Nicaea were now, in July, 

1098, reduced to a few hundreds of cavalry, and about 
20,000 foot. This was the work of war, disease, and 
famine; this the result of desertion, and of the detachment 
of large forces from the main army by the action of self- 
interested leaders. Of these one, named Baldwin, had 
gone eastward to found at Edessa, in Mesopotamia, a 
Christian Kingdom which lasted until 1151. Bohemond 
the Norman stayed behind as possessor and Prince of 
Antioch; Count Raymond of Toulouse had gone off on a 
foray into the interior of Syria. It was nof until May, 

1099, that the scanty force just named, with a crowd of 
camp followers and pilgrims, started from Antioch for 
the object of the whole expedition—the goal to win which 
such enormous efforts had been spent—the holy city. 

The path of the Crusaders lay along the shore of Syria, 
between Mount Lebanon and the sea, on which they were 
attended by the coasting traders from Genoa and Pisa. 
Through Sidon, Tyre, Acre, and Gesarea, they passed 
amidst the relics of old Phoenician glory, and then turned 
inland for Jerusalem, by Lydda, Emmaus, and other scenes 
of sacred history and legend. Early in June, 1099, they 
came in sight of what so many had desired and striven to 
behold, but so few were left to gaze on with delighted eyes. 
In full view of the sacred site (then covered, after a period 
of desolation, by the buildings erected since the great rebel¬ 
lion against Pladrian in A. D. 131) of that Jerusalem of 


THE CRUSADES 


347 


old, where things so wondrous and so awful had been done 
in sight of earth and heaven, the enthusiasm of the foot¬ 
sore soldiers of the cross burst out in cries and even tears 
of joy, from men prostrated to their knees in worship and 
thanksgiving. 

The holy city was at this time in possession, not of the 
Turks, but of the Saracens of Egypt, whose Caliph had 
conquered Palestine three years before. With a powerful 
garrison the Caliph’s Governor was ready for a stout 
defense. The Crusaders attacked the northern and west¬ 
ern sides of the city, Godfrey of Bouillon’s standard float¬ 
ing from the lower slope of Calvary. After the repulse 
of a rash assault, some suffering from thirst, and a siege 
of forty days in all, the moving tower of Godfrey was suc¬ 
cessfully used against the walls. “The archers in the tur¬ 
ret cleared the rampart of the foe, the drawbridge was let 
down, and on a Friday afternoon at three o’clock, Godfrey 
of Bouillon stood victorious on the walls,” and the Cru¬ 
saders then stormed the place on every side. Thus was 
Jerusalem recaptured by the Christians 463 years after its 
seizure by the Mohammedans under the Arabian Caliph 
Omar in 636. This great result was due, along with the 
valor of the gallant Godfrey, to the energy of Tancred in 
providing wood for the tower, the skill and industry of the 
Genoese engineers who built it, and the ferocious courage 
of the enthusiastic Crusaders. In a three days’ massacre, 
during which 70,000 Moslems perished, and the Jews of 
the place were burnt alive in their synagogues, the victors 
showed their zeal for their religion, and then did homage 
to the God of Christians at the Holy Sepulchre, 

The city thus recovered for Christianity was made, 
together with territory to the north and south thereof, into 
the Christian Kingdom of Jerusalem. The chiefs of the 
Crusaders elected Godfrey of Bouillon as the first sov- 


34 * ANCIENT AND MEDIAEVAL HISTORY 

ereign of the new dominion, but he declined the title and 
insignia of royalty, and styled himself simply, “Defender 
and Baron of the Holy Sepulchred This worthiest of all 
Crusaders lived for less than a year, beloved and honored 
in his office. In August, 1099, Godfrey utterly defeated 
the Sultan of Egypt at the battle of Ascalon, and thus 
established firmly the newly-founded kingdom, which con¬ 
tinued for nearly a century. 

Other Latin principalities in the East existed at 
Antioch and at Edessa, and between the new kingdom 
and Antioch arose the County of Tripoli. The laws and 
language, the manners and titles, of the French Nation and 
the Latin Church, were introduced, and a military force 
was maintained as a defense, constantly needed, against 
the surrounding swarms of Saracens and Turks. 

In connection with the new Kingdom of Jerusalem, 
and as its chief defenders, now arose the great orders of 
religious knights, as the Knights Hospitallers, or Knights 
of St. John of Jerusalem, and the Knights Templars. 
These orders had their origin in the peculiar chivalric 
spirit diffused through Europe as the result of the Cru¬ 
sade. According to the view of Hegel, the German phil¬ 
osopher, “The ferocity and savage valor of the barbarian, 
pacified already by civilization and social life, was now 
elevated by religion and kindled to a noble enthusiasm 
through contact with the boundless magnanimity of 
Oriental prowess. These orders of knighthood were 
founded on a basis similar to that of the monastic fraterni¬ 
ties. They had the same vow of renunciation of the 
world. At the same time they undertook the defense of 
the pilgrims to the Holy Land as they passed through 
Europe. The first duty was the display of knightly brav¬ 
ery, afterward they were pledged to sustain and to care for 
the poor and the sick. Their members sacrificed them- 


THE CRUSADES 


349 


selves with reckless bravery for a common interest, and 
formed a network of fraternal coalition all over Europe/’ 

An immediate result of the First Crusade was a great 
extension of the territory belonging to the Eastern Em¬ 
pire. The victory of Dorylseum gave back to the Com- 
nenian dynasty of Constantinople (reigned 1057 to 1204) 
all the west, and a strip in the northwest, of Asia Minor, 
and a considerable district in the southeast, and forced 
the Sultan of Roum to have his capital at Iconium, in the 
south of the peninsula, instead of at Nicaea (nowbelonging 
to the Greek Emperor), where he had been a constant 
threat to Constantinople. The First Crusade, beyond 
doubt, prevented the fall of the declining Empire of the 
East, and gave it a new lease of life. 

For about half a century the Christian dominion in the 
East maintained itself against the attacks of the surround¬ 
ing Mohammedans. Then a time of danger came, when 
strong help from Europe was needed, and the Second Cru¬ 
sade took place. The Christian principality of Edessa, in 
Mesopotamia, was seized by the Turks in 1145, and the 
Christians were put to death. This roused much feeling 
in Europe, and the Second Crusade was organized bv 
Conrad III, Emperor of Germany, and Louis VII of 
France, the chief sovereigns of the time. The Preacher 
of this Crusade (as Peter the Hermit had been of the 
First Crusade) was one of the greatest ecclesiastics of the 
Middle Ages, the holy and earnest St. Bernard, Abbot of 
Clairvaux, near Langres, in the east of France. 

A force of over 300,000 men, horse and foot, took 
the same route to Constantinople (in 1147) as the earlier 
Crusaders. Conrad was first in the field, accompanied 
by the Kings of Poland and Bohemia and many feudal 
lords, with a cloud of light-armed troops, women and 
children, priests and monks. The Greek Emperor, 


350 ANCIENT AND MEDIAEVAL HISTORY 

Manuel Comnenus, behaved with gross treachery to the 
forces of Conrad, hampering their movements, supply¬ 
ing bad food in exchange for good money, giving in¬ 
telligence of their coming to the Turks, and furnishing 
guides who misled their march. The army of Conrad, 
when he arrived in Asia Minor, was almost destroyed by 
fighting in the interior of the country, and by the hard¬ 
ships undergone, and a small remnant only returned to 
Nicsea. There the French advancing army, under Louis 
VII, met them, and the march through Asia Minor 
began. The result was a total failure. The Turks, in 
overwhelming numbers, crushed the Christian columns 
in detail, only a handful of the great host at last reached 
Jerusalem, and there was nothing to be done except to 
return ingloriously to Europe. 

Forty years passed between the Second and Third 
Crusades. During this time the power of the Moham¬ 
medans in the East had been growing under Nureddin, 
whose Empire at last extended from the Tigris to the 
Nile. A new power had also arisen in Egypt. A Kur¬ 
dish chieftain named Saladin, sprung from the hardy, 
strong savage, plundering, and independent tribes in the 
hilly country of Kurdistan, beyond the Tigris, had made 
himself master of Egypt by sheer force of genius and 
character in 1171, and on the death of Nureddin in 1174, 
Saladin began to acquire his dominions. The invasion 
of Palestine in 1187 was soon followed by the capture of 
Jerusalem, and the work accomplished by the First 
Crusade—the Christian possession of the Holy City— 
was thus completely undone. 

Saladin was the greatest Mohammedan ruler of his 
time, and one of the greatest and noblest characters in 
the whole history of Islam. Master of Egypt, Syria, 
and Arabia, he ruled at last, in power and wisdom, an 


THE CRUSADES 


35 1 

Empire extending from the African Tripoli to the 
Tigris, and from the mountains of Armenia to the 
Indian Ocean. Pure in life, rigid in the Mohammedan 
faith and practice, just in judgment, courteous in de¬ 
meanor, boundless in liberality, brave as a lion in the 
field, Saladin shines forth as the brightest example of 
Oriental knighthood. 

This Third Crusade belongs to English history, from 
the distinguished part played in the expedition by Rich¬ 
ard I, the chivalrous foe and admirer (one might almost 
say—the friend) of the great Saladin, who was well 
worthy of the steel of the foremost knight of Christen¬ 
dom. The news of the fall of Jerusalem aroused the 
fanaticism of Europe, and three monarchs prepared to 
take the field in A. D. 1189. These were the Emperor 
of Germany, Frederick Barbarossa; Philip Augustus of 
France, and Richard Coeur de Lion of England. 

Frederick I of Germany was a veteran soldier, and 
marched overland for the East with a great army of 
horse and foot, reaching Asia Minor early in 1190. His 
army was then attacked by immense bodies of Turks, 
who made the Crusaders fight all the way during a 
march of twenty days, when they reached and stormed 
the capital, Iconium. The way to Jerusalem was open, 
but great losses had been incurred, and the German 
expedition was virtually brought to an end by the acci¬ 
dental drowning of the Emperor in a mountain stream 
tpf Cilicia. 

l 

The French and English Crusaders went by sea, and 
their doings are familiar to the English-speaking race 
through the career of Richard Coeur de Lion. This 
brilliant but fruitless crusade is described in the article on 
its hero in the volume, “World’s Famous Warriors.” 

It ended in a three years’ truce (concluded in 1192) 


352 ANCIENT AND MEDIAEVAL HISTORY 

by which the honor of the English King was saved by 
stipulation that Acre, Jaffa, and other seaports should 
remain in Christian hands and pilgrims should be unmo¬ 
lested in their visits to Jerusalem. 

The Fourth Crusade has an importance of its own, 
not for what it effected against the Mohammedans (for 
the expedition never went to Palestine at all), but for 
what occurred at Constantinople. The Greek and the 
Latin churches had been long at issue on theological 
points, and the enmity of the Christians in the East and 
the West of Europe had been increased during the first 
three Crusades, though one result of the fighting of the 
Western warriors had been the partial restoration of the 
Greek dominion in Asia Minor. The existing hostility 
came to a head in 1203, when the Crusaders of the 
fourth expedition, headed by Baldwin, Count of Flan¬ 
ders, and the Marquis of Montferrat (in Italy) interfered 
in the dynastic arrangements of the Greek Empire. 
This was resented by the Greeks, who deposed and 
killed the rulers set over them by the Crusaders, and the 
end of it all was the storming of Constantinople in 1204 
by a combined force of French and Venetians. 

The Eastern Empire was now broken up for a time. 
The Venetians got Crete and the islands in the south of 
ihe /Egean Sea (the Archipelago). There was a Greek 
Empire still round Nicaea or Nice in the northwest of 
Asia Minor, and another, called the Empire of Trebiz- 
ond, along the southern shore of the Black Sea. The 
Greek dominion also included Greece and Epirus. The 
Latin Kingdom at Constantinople lasted till 1261, when 
Constantinople was won back by the Nicaean Emperor, 
and the Eastern Empire continued till its final over¬ 
throw by the Ottoman Turks at the end of this period of 
history. 


THE CRUSADES 


353 


There were other crusades of less importance. 
In 1218 a large force from western Europe went to 
Egypt, and captured Damietta after a long siege, but 
the enterprise ended in total failure. In 1228 Frederick 
II, Emperor of Germany, assumed the cross (as the 
phrase was), and started for Palestine with a powerful 
armament from the harbors of Sicily and Apulia. On 
his arrival in the Holy Land Frederick entered Jeru¬ 
salem, and the Mohammedan ruler surrendered that 
and some other cities to the Christians; this state of 
things lasted only till 1243, when Palestine was over¬ 
whelmed by an invasion of fresh hordes of Turks from 
the Caspian; Jerusalem has never since been a Christian 
possession. The Seventh and Eighth Crusades were 
undertaken by Louis IX of France. In A. D. 1249 this 
virtuous and fanatical sovereign went with a great force 
against Egypt, hoping to win his way thence up to Jeru¬ 
salem. Damietta was at once captured, but sickness, 
famine, and the Mohammedan foe proved too strong at 
last, and Louis was taken prisoner and obliged to pay 
ransom. In 1270 St. Louis undertook the last of the 
Crusades, one in which English warriors joined. On 
the way to Palestine the French King turned aside to 
attack the Mohammedans of Tunis, and died before the 
walls, of disease. Prince Edward (Edward I) of Eng¬ 
land made his way to Palestine, and returned after some 
slight successes. In 1268 Antioch was finally taken by 
the Sultan of Egypt and Syria; this loss was followed by 
*the capture of many other towns, and the Christian hold 
on Palestine was reduced to the possession of Acre, then 
a strong fortress and a place of great trade. A quarrel 
with the Sultan of Syria led to the capture of Acre in 

May, 1291, by a great force of Moslems; the remnant of 
Vol. 1 — 23 


354 ANCIENT AND MEDIAEVAL HISTORY 

the Knights Templars went to Cyprus, and all dominion 
of Christians in Palestine came to an end. 

The religious enthusiasm aroused by these Wars of 
the Cross increased, both directly and indirectly, the 
authority of the Popes and of the Western (Latin) 
Church throughout Europe. It was by Papal exhorta¬ 
tion or command that the European sovereigns, in many 
instances, undertook the expeditions to the East; with 
the papal blessing the warriors started on the long and 
dangerous enterprise; to support the expenses of these 
wars, the Popes assumed the right of taxation to some 
extent, and so acquired authority and further recogni¬ 
tion as to secular affairs in the European States. The 
church was enriched by succeeding to lands bequeathed 
to her by Crusaders who might die, and often did die, 
without heirs, and by endowments made by such as 
shirked the duty of personal service in the cause of the 
Cross. 

There is no stronger bond of communion than that 
which unites those who have fought and bled on the 
same battle-fields, shared the same adventures, and 
encountered the same dangers, trials, and misfortunes. 
The journeying to and from the Holy Land, and the 
deeds done there against the infidels, were the common 
simultaneous work of various Western nations, who 
thereby came to know each other better, to have a 
fellow-feeling and a mutual respect, and to cast away the 
prejudices born of ignorance and isolation. Enlighten¬ 
ment in this way came to Europe, in no small degree, 
from the Crusades. 

The power of the feudal aristocracy was lessened in 
many quarters through the encumbering of estates with 
debt in meeting the heavy expenses of an expedition to 
the East. One consequence of this was that land was 


THE CRUSADES 


355 


acquired by members of the rich trading class that had 
begun to arise, and so a new aristocracy of wealth 
gained by enterprise and skill, instead of by rapine and 
extortion, was by slow degrees created. The edifice of 
feudalism was undermined in the alienation of the 
estates of proud, martial, and oppressive barons, and in 
the frequent extinction even of their race by death in 
war. As Gibbon says: “Their poverty extorted from 
their pride those charters of freedom which unlocked the 
fetters of the slave, secured the farm of the peasant and 
the shop of the artificer, and gradually restored a sub¬ 
stance and a soul to the most numerous and useful part 
of the community. The conflagration which destroyed 
the tall and barren trees of the forest gave air and scope 
to the vegetation of the smaller and nutritive plants of 
the soil.” In other words, modern society is indebted 
to the Crusades for the beginnings of its best constitu¬ 
ent, the great middle class. 

The commercial republics of Italy received much 
benefit from the Crusades. The large number of 
troops that went to Palestine wholly or partially by sea 
were borne in transport vessels supplied by these mari¬ 
time States, which also did a great trade in provisions 
and supplies for warlike purposes. The ships returned 
on the homeward voyage filled up with products of the 
East before unknown or little used in Europe, and new 
markets for commerce became established at many 
points upon the eastern coasts of the great inland sea. 
New arts and processes in manufactures were also intro¬ 
duced to Europe. 

The mental stir aroused by the experience of an 
adventurous change of scene could not but have the 
happiest effect upon the stagnation and stolidity engen¬ 
dered among those who never move from home. The 


356 ANCIENT AND MEDIAEVAL HISTORY 

men of Western Europe went forth into the East, and 
found there, in the foes whom they encountered on the 
field of battle, not only warriors as gallant as themselves, 
but their superiors in knowledge, industry, and art. 
The nations of the west of Europe had abundant energy 
of character, and an active, imitative spirit, and thus 
derived essential good from intercourse with the Arab¬ 
ians and Greeks, who then possessed the highest culture 
of the world. It was at a later period, indeed, that learn¬ 
ing thoroughly revived, and the Latin conquerors of 
Constantinople, early in the Thirteenth Century, were 
still too rude to understand and master the treasures of 
literature existing in her libraries and schools. But 
rudiments of learning, in mathematical and medical 
science especially, were at any rate acquired in the East, 
and the way for better things was smoothed. A revival 
of thought, a growth of liberal ideas, arose out of the 
expeditions which were due, in the beginning, to a spirit 
of fanatical enthusiasm, but in the end did much to les¬ 
sen religious bigotry and prejudice concerning those 
whom Christian knights found to be as brave, as gen¬ 
erous, as truly chivalrous as themselves. Among the 
minor benefits conferred by the East upon the West 
during the times of the crusades may be recounted 
windmills, invented first in Asia Minor, and introduced 
to Normandy in 1105, and such luxuries as silk and 
sugar, brought from Greece and Egypt into Italy by the 
traders of the great commercial states. 


ENGLAND’S RISE AS A NATION 

After the death of Hardicanute (1042) the English 
people had been under foreign domination for a quarter 
of a century. The glories of the ancient race had van¬ 
ished among intestine conflicts, exhausting war, pay¬ 
ment of tributes to rapacious foes and subjection to 
Danish rulers. The memories of Alfred and Athelstan 
were preserved in their race, traditions, and songs and 
so the general voice of the people was for the elevation 
to the throne of Edward, son of Ethelred, and his second 
wife, the Norman Princess Emma. His mild religious 
character, for he was more fitted to be a monk than a 
monarch, led to his being called the Confessor. Edu¬ 
cated in Normandy, he surrounded himself with foreign 
friends and filled the high places of the Kingdom with 
Normans. The Saxons were jealous and their leader, 
the powerful Earl Godwin, succeeded in expelling the 
Frenchmen. Harold, son of the Earl, was elected suc¬ 
cessor to Edward by the Witenagemot, which thus for 
the first time violated the well-established custom of not 
going outside of the royal family for a monarch. Wil¬ 
liam, Duke of Normandy, demanded the throne as next 
of kin. When the news of Harold’s accession reached 
William at Rouen he was moved to the deepest wrath. 
None dared speak to him as he clenched his teeth, strode 
up and down the palace hall with unequal and hurried 
steps and half-drew his sword from his sheath. William 
had good reason for anger, as while on a visit to Nor¬ 
mandy he had made Harold prisoner and wrung from 
him an oath that he would aid the Norman to secure the 

357 


55 $ ANCIENT AND MEDIAEVAL HISTORY 

throne after Edward’s death. Accusing Harold of per¬ 
jury, William undertook the conquest of England with 
the approval of the Pope, who was angered because 
Peter’s pence had not been paid. Harold was opposed 
by some of his countrymen and mustered only a meager 
force to meet William at the battle of Hastings, which 
resulted in the Saxon’s death. William had little diffi¬ 
culty in securing his election by the Witanagemot. 
Yet many of the Saxons continued for years to resist 
the conqueror and lived like outlaws in the woods. 

The Northmen or Normans were the very pick and 
flower of the Scandinavian peoples. What the Aryans 
were to the primitive races of mankind on the plateau of 
Central Asia, what the Hellenes were to the Pelasgic 
tribes in olden Greece, were the Normans to their breth¬ 
ren on the coast of the Northern Sea. They had in 
their best form all the qualities inherent in their race. 
They were foremost in courage, military discipline, and 
skill and in the power of embracing and improving on 
the culture with which their conquests made them 
familiar. They were the descendants of the men who, 
under Rollo, had threatened Paris and won French terri¬ 
tory. The hardy Northmen, established in a fertile 
region, under a warmer sky than that of their former 
home, adopted at last the speech, usages, and faith of 
those whom they had subdued. They gained and ab¬ 
sorbed all the knowledge which they found existing in 
their new home. They were safe by their courage and 
arms from all foreign assailants, and so a tribe of pirates 
became a Nation of civilized people, devoted to tillage, 
handicrafts, trade, letters, and the arts, but skilled also 
and courageous in war and full of the chivalrous spirit 
which has worked with such power and effect on the 
morals and manners and politics of Europe. The pride 


i 


ENGLAND’S RISE AS A NATION 


359 


and magnificence of life in this formidable Nation were 
shown by their nobles in large, strong and stately 
castles, fiery steeds, choice falcons and hawks for the 
chase, and in the mimic contests of armored knights, 
where warriors and courtiers strove in tourney for the 
smiles of graceful dames. Though chiefly renowned for 
their military exploits, the Normans were famed for 
their polished manners, winning demeanor, and diplo¬ 
matic skill. 

These traits were found in William, who was one of 
the most polished knights and skillful warriors of his 
day. He began by treating the Saxon nobles with 
kindness. Peace and order were restored, trade re¬ 
sumed its activity and no change in the laws and cus¬ 
toms of the realm was made. But William had no idea 
of assuming the position of a chief among equals which 
was the feudalistic idea of a King. Nor would he 
subordinate his power to that of the Church. He found 
in the organization of the conquered Kingdom prin¬ 
ciples which enabled him, while using feudal language, 
to be in fact an absolute King and to set such limits to 
the power of Rome as to keep the Church virtually in 
subordination. An administrative system centered in 
the crown and working chiefly through the exchequer, 
went far to centralize the Government. Triumphant 
suppression of insurrection enabled them to get rid of 
the baronage of the conquest. Gradually a new nobil¬ 
ity of administrative origin took the place of the Saxon 
Earls, England being divided by William among his 
comrades. The secular and ecclesiastical lands of the 
Saxons were occupied by the conquerors and those who 
had been cowherds and weavers or simple priests on the 
Continent, became lords and bishops in England. Be¬ 
tween 1080 and 1086, a register of all the properties 


360 ANCIENT AND MEDIAEVAL HISTORY 


occupied was drawn up. This was known as the 
Doomsday book in England. Thus was established the 
most thorough feudal system in Europe. There were 
600 barons and under them 60,000 knights, while over 
them all was the King, who took for his own use 1,462 
manors and the principal cities, and by requiring direct 
oath from the chevaliers, bound every vassal personally 
to himself. The whole history of England depends 
upon this partition, for when the royalty became oppres¬ 
sive the barons, in self-defense, were able to unite with 
burgesses, and the nobles saved their rights only by 
securing those of their humble allies. English public 
liberty thus came about by agreement between the 
burgher middle class and the nobles. Another cause 
was that chivalry was never really dominant in England. 
For the man unassisted by birth to rise was harder in 
some ages than others, but there has been no age in 
England where it was wholly impossible. 

The fusion of the two races was so speedy that a 
writer a little more than a hundred years after the con¬ 
quest (the author of the famous Dialogues de Scaccario) 
could say that among the free population it was im¬ 
possible to tell who was of Norman and who of Eng¬ 
lish birth. That is to say, the great nobles must have 
been all but purely Normans; the lowest classes must 
have been all but purely English; in the intermediate 
classes, among the townsmen and the smaller land- 
owners, the two races were so intermixed and they had 
so modified one another that the distinction between 
them had been forgotten. 

The greatest of the outward changes which were 
caused by the Norman conquest was its effect on the 
language and literature of England. In the matter of 
language, as in other matters, the conquest itself 


ENGLAND’S RISE AS A NATION 


361 


wrought no formal change; whatever change happened 
was the gradual result of the state of things which the 
conquest brought about. The French language was never 
substituted for English by any formal act. Documents 
were written in English long after the conquest. As it 
was with institutions, so it was with language. The old 
language was neither proscribed nor forgotten, but a 
new language came in by the side of it. At first there 
were two languages spoken, the Norman being the 
fashionable tongue and the Saxon the common speech; 
but all the nobles, even William himself, learned Saxon. 
Slowly as the two peoples combined, the two languages 
coalesced, forming, with the evolution of subsequent 
centuries, the English language as we know it to-day. 

William the Conqueror died in 1087, while on an 
expedition against the King of France, Philip I. Will¬ 
iam II Rufus, his second son, succeeded him in Eng¬ 
land, and Robert, the elder son, in Normandy. Robert 
tried to take England away from his younger brother, 
but failing in the attempt went on a crusade. He was 
still absent when William Rufus died on a hunting 
excursion. Their younger brother, Henry I, surnamed 
Beauclerc, seized the crown, and when Robert wished 
to claim his rights, defeated him at Tenchebray (1106), 
reunited Normandy to England, and conquered Louis 
the Fat, who had attempted to secure at least the suc¬ 
cession of the duchy for William Cliton, Robert’s son 
(1119). When Henry I died he left his throne by will 
to Matilda, his daughter, widow of the Emperor Henry 
V, and wife of Geoffrey, Count of Anjou. Henry 
charged his nephew, Stephen of Blois, to protect the 
Empress. Stephen seized the crown and defeated this 
plot, and vanquished the Scotch, Matilda’s allies, at the 
battle of the Standard. Less successful against her, he 


362 ANCIENT AND MEDIAEVAL HISTORY 

was taken prisoner. A compromise was made by which 
he remained King during his life and was succeeded by 
Henry of Anjou, son of the Empress. 

Normandy and Maine were acquired by Henry II 
through the renunciation of his mother, Matilda, and 
from his father he inherited Anjou and Touraine. 
Marrying Eleanor, the divorced wife of Louis the 
Young, she brought him as dowry Poitiers, Bordeaux, 
Agin, and Limoges, together, with sovereignty of Au¬ 
vergne, Saintonge, Angoumois, La Marche, and Peri- 
gord. Finally, in 1154, at the age of twenty-one, 
he ascended the throne of England and afterward 
married one of his sons to the heiress of Brittany. 
His power was formidable, but Henry used it only 
to fight against his clergy and his sons. The clergy, 
from the time of the Roman Empire, had the 
privilege of self-judging. In a case against a clergy¬ 
man lay tribunals were incompetent and only eccles¬ 
iastical jurisdiction could decide. In England, Will¬ 
iam the Conqueror had given this privilege, called 
‘‘Benefit of Clergy,” a wide scope, resulting in numer¬ 
ous abuses and scandalous impunities. Henry II 
wished to put an end to it, and in order to rule the clergy 
named as Archbishop of Canterbury his chaplain, 
Thomas a Becket, a Saxon, and until then the most bril¬ 
liant and docile of courtiers. Becket at once became 
another man—austere and inflexible. In a great as¬ 
semblage of bishops, abbots, and barons, held at Clar¬ 
endon (1164), the King passed the constitutions of 
Clarendon, which obliged every clergyman accused of a 
crime to appear before the ordinary courts of justice, 
forbade any ecclesiastic to leave the Kingdom without 
royal permit, and intrusted to the King the guardianship 
and revenue of every bishopric and benefice vacant. 


ENGLAND’S RISE AS A NATION 363 

Thomas a Becket opposed these statutes, and to avoid 
the anger of his master, fled to France. Louis VII, 
having brought about a reconciliation between Henry 
and Becket, the latter returned to Canterbury, but con¬ 
ceded nothing in ecclesiastical privileges. So the King 
let fall words which four knights interpreted as a sen¬ 
tence of death, and slew the archbishop at the foot of the 
altar (1170). This crime aroused so great indignation 
against Henry II that he was obliged to annul the Con¬ 
stitutions of Clarendon and do penance on the tomb of 
the martyr. He would not have submitted to this 
humiliation had he not feared a popular rising and 
excommunication at the time when he was at war with 
his three eldest sons, Henry Short-Coat, Duke of Maine 
and Anjou; Richard Coeur de Lion, Duke of Aquitaine; 
and Geoffrey, Duke of Brittany. Even the fourth son, 
John Lackland, at last joined the others. Henry II 
passed his last days in fighting his sons and the King of 
France, who helped the rebels. In 1171 he had con¬ 
quered the east and the south of Ireland. 

Henry handed to his son a powerful and well-organ¬ 
ized monarchy, in which the feeling of national unity 
had made great advances. His system proved strong 
enough to support the continued absence of Richard in 
the crusades and in his French dominions; national life 
even acquired increased strength by the self-govern¬ 
ment which was thus forced on the administration. The 
brave and chivalrous Cceur de Lion* was followed by his 
brother, John Lackland, a man who seems to have been 
without a redeeming trait. Boastful but cowardly, 
tyrannical but weak, he excited the anger of all classes. 
He imposed taxes at pleasure, wronged the poor and 
plundered the rich. At one time it is said he threw into 

♦See volume “World’s Famous Warriors.” 


364 ANCIENT AND MEDIAEVAL HISTORY 

prison a wealthy Jew who refused to give him an enor¬ 
mous sum of money, and pulled out a tooth every day 
until he paid the required amount. His crime in mur¬ 
dering his brother’s son cost him Touraine, Anjou, 
Maine, Normandy, and Poitou, and he was stripped of 
all his French possessions, a magnificent territory, 
greater than that ruled by the King of France him¬ 
self. He foolishly renewed his father’s quarrel with the 
Papal See, was excommunicated and deposed, where¬ 
upon he formally surrendered his crown to the Pope, to 
whom he acknowledged himself as a vassal. Then he 
tried to take revenge for his humiliations by forming 
against France the coalition which was overthrown at 
the battle of Bouvines. While his allies were defeated 
in the North John himself was vanquished in Poitou. 

When John returned to England he found that the 
barons, freed from connection with the Continent, and 
supported by all parties smarting from misgovernment 
and the shame of disaster, were in revolt. They ap¬ 
peared as the real Government of England, and wrung 
from the humbled King at Runnymede the Magna 
Charta (1215), that great charter which secured in the 
form of a solemn treaty, the foundations of the future 
liberties of England. This great statute was confirmed 
no less than thirty-two times, for whenever money was 
required by the King its renewal was demanded. It 
now stands on the English statute book as 25 Edward 
I (1297). Section 29 of this act is the keystone of Eng¬ 
lish history: “No freeman shall be taken or imprisoned, 
or be disseized of his freeholds, or liberties or free cus¬ 
toms, or be outlawed or exiled, or any otherwise be 
destroyed; nor will we pass upon him nor condemn him, 
but by lawful judgment of his peers or by the law of the 
la ad. We will sell to no man, we will not deny or defei 


ENGLAND'S RISE AS A NATION 365 

to any man, either justice or right.” No class was 
neglected, but each obtained some cherished right. 
Personal freedom, security of property, and liberty of 
movement thus became the essential rights of every 
Englishman. These rights were not indeed immedi¬ 
ately conceded; John himself attempted to tear up the 
charter and obtained the Pope’s sanction to do so. The 
charter was made a reality, and the orderly development* 
of rights secured under Edward I. 

With John and the reign of his son began one of 
the most important periods in English history. It was 
the time when the Nation, laws, and languages finally 
assimilated whatever was to be assimilated of the foreign 
elements brought in by William the Conqueror, and 
finally threw off whatever was to be thrown off. Dur¬ 
ing this time most of the things which go to make up 
the national life of England begin to assume the general 
outline which has continued with details down to the 
present time. It was now that the principle of limiting 
the power of the King began to assert itself. Rever¬ 
ence for the monarch had been destroyed by the acts 
of the vicious and cowardly John. Henry III (1216- 
1272) was not such a monarch as to strengthen the 
respect for kingly power. His reign was a long minor¬ 
ity, and in it there was constant weakness, perjury, 
and acts of violence, and everything which should teach 
the Nation the necessity of restraining by institutions 
the royal will that was so little sure of itself. Abroad 
Henry was defeated by Louis IX (St. Louis) at Taille- 
bourg and Saintes. At home the discontent of the peo¬ 
ple increased because of repeated violations of the 
Magna Charta and the favor shown to the relatives of 
Queen Eleanor of Provence, who caused all the offices 
to be given to them, and also because of a real invasion 


366 ANCIENT AND MEDIAEVAL HISTORY 

of Italian clergy sent by the Pope and who seized the 
beneficies. 

The finances fell into utter decay. At length a 
demand for money to support, in the interest of Rome, 
the claim of the King’s son to the throne of Sicily 
brought matters to a crisis, and on June n, 1258, at the 
great National Council of Oxford, the first Assembly, to 
which the name of Parliament was officially given, was 
held. The barons forced the King to entrust the 
reforms to twenty-four of themselves, of whom only 
twelve were appointed by him. These twenty-four 
delegates published the statutes or provisions of Oxford. 
The King confirmed the Magna Charta. The twenty- 
four were to name each year the Lord High Chancellor, 
the Lord High Treasurer, the Judges, and other public 
officers, Governors of the castles, etc. It was made a 
capital crime to oppose their decisions; and ordered that 
Parliament should be assembled every three years. 
Henry III protested, and appealed to the arbitration of 
St. Louis, who decided in his favor. But the barons 
refused to accept this judgment; attacked the King in 
arms, under the leadership of a grandson of the con¬ 
queror of Albigenses, Simon de Montfort, Earl of Lei¬ 
cester, and took him prisoner, with his son Edward, at 
the Battle of Lewes (1264). Leicester governed in the 
name of the King, whom he kept captive; organized the 
first complete representation of the English Nation by 
the ordinance of 1265, which prescribed the election to 
Parliament of two knights for each county and two 
citizens for each city or borough of each county. 

This was the origin of the House of Commons. This 
summons to Parliament was the first that ever called 
for representatives of towns. It is true that by the Plan- 
tagenet system of rule, local government in the towns 


ENGLAND’S RISE AS A NATION 367 

as well as in the counties had been already brought to 
bear on the central administration of affairs, and that the 
direct summons of delegates chosen by the towns to sit 
in the great Council of the Realm or the Parliament, was 
nothing more than a natural extension of the summons 
of their representatives to meet the royal commissioners 
of justices on circuit. The genius of De Monfort is 
shown in that the thing was natural; it gave no shock 
to people’s minds, and it caused no surprise. Thus it 
was that it lived and grew and became a thing abiding 
as it is now. Henceforth, in spite of reaction, which 
ever fades away to naught before the power of real prog¬ 
ress, the trader and the merchant were to sit along with 
the baron, the bishop, and the knight of the shire, and 
deliberate on measures for the good of all. All classes 
in the State were represented and so there was a true 
and complete Parliament. It must be understood, how¬ 
ever, that there was a gradual development. Many of 
the early Parliaments were packed by the King, and 
Parliaments were of varying strength; some powerful 
and some weak. Indeed English history for 500 years 
became little more than a struggle between King and 
Parliament, in which Parliament always won when it 
had the sufficient amount of nerve to insist upon obedi¬ 
ence. Of its development during the Plantagenets it 
may be said that, armed with the power of taxation, it 
took advantage of the King’s weakness and made good 
its position as a national council. In 1309 Parliament 
stipulated conditions to the voting of taxes, so that roy¬ 
alty, naturally extravagant, would be kept in check and 
made to respect the laws. In the course of the Four¬ 
teenth Century there was a marked growth in the power 
and importance of Parliament. During the first fifty 
years of the life of the institution since the days of De 


368 ANCIENT AND MEDIAEVAL HISTORY 

Montfort, it became settled that solemn acts of change 
in the method of rule must be done by this body, and also 
that Parliament alone could legally enforce the payment 
of any tax. Under Edward II the Commons are found 
voting taxes only on conditions of redress, by the King, 
of grievances which they brought before him. The 
action of the barons through this period shows, how¬ 
ever, that they held the proper sphere of the Commons 
to be confined to asking for redress and ordering the 
payment of taxes to the King by the class which they 
presented; high matters of state, such as the making of 
peace and Avar, and important changes in the Govern¬ 
ment, such as the passing of ordinances, were regarded 
as belonging only to the nobles of the land. 

The Kingdom was increased under Edward I (1272- 
1307) by the acquisition of Wales. Politically and 
socially Wales had sunk into seeming barbarism under 
the evil influence of internal feuds and border warfare 
with its powerful neighbor. The mass of the people 
knew nothing of the use of bread, and were wild herds¬ 
men, feeding on the milk and flesh of their flocks, and 
clothing themselves in skins. They were divided into 
numerous clans, Avaging pitiless, revengeful, and treach¬ 
erous Avarfare against each other. The only sign of 
culture lay in the poetry of their bards, Avhose Celtic 
nature burst forth in song of real literary merit, ex¬ 
pressed in a language which at that early age had 
reached a definite form and was used Avith great richness 
of imagery to manifest the poet’s sense of the beauties of 
nature and to reveal the emotions of the heart. The 
utterances of the Welsh singers Avere not confined to the 
region of romance. The passionate patriotism of their 
race roused them to fling out in many an ode their peo¬ 
ple’s hatred of the Saxon, and their land was stirred with 


ENGLAND’S RISE AS A NATION 369 

a new and feverish strength to its last contest with the 
English invaders. The southern part of the country, 
in its more level regions along the Bristol Channel, was 
occupied by Norman barons after the conquest, and 
Henry I settled as colonists in Pembrokeshire a num¬ 
ber of Flemings, who brought with them their habits of 
industry and their skill in the weaving of cloths. In the 
last century of Welsh independence some Princes 
named Llewellyn were in power. The last of these had 
been in arms against Plenry III, but had promised fealty 
to the King before Prince Edward went on his crusade. 
Llewellyn had conquered Glamorgan, and in recogni¬ 
tion of his strength, he was allowed, in 1267, to take the 
title of Prince of Wales and to receive homage from the 
other Welsh chieftains. When summoned as a vas¬ 
sal to do homage at Edward’s coronation he refused to 
do so without a safe conduct. Wars then began, in 
which the Welsh fought with great bravery, being 
hunted from one retreat to another. David, the last 
Prince, was betrayed to the enemy, and tried before 
Parliament; was put to death as traitor (1283). In 
April, 1284, the infant son of Edward was born at Canar- 
von and was invested with the dignity and title of Prince 
of Wales, since generally given to the English sover¬ 
eign’s eldest son. 

Wars with Scotland also marked the reign of 
Edward I. Chosen as umpire between two claimants 
for the Scottish throne, Robert Bruce and John Baliol, 
Edward decided in favor of the latter on condition that 
he would regard the English King as his feudal lord. 
Such a condition did not suit the Scots, whose ancestors 
had refused to yield to either Romans or Northmen, and 
who, in the reign of Kenneth, son of Malcolm, had 
acquired Strathclyde from the English. There had 

VOL. I — ?4 


370 ANCIENT AND MEDIAEVAL HISTORY 

been constant border warfare until the century before 
Edward, when there was scarcely a quarrel. But the 
Scots could not brook a condition of vassalage and 
revolted, whereupon Edward took possession of the 
country as a fortified fief in 1296. Under William Wal¬ 
lace, the Scots arose again, but were defeated, and their 
leader taken to London and hanged. Another leader 
was found in Robert Bruce.* Edward marched against 
him, but died in sight of Scotland. The English sol¬ 
diers continued the battle and drove Bruce from one 
hiding place to another. Almost in despair, the patriot 
lay one day sleepless on his bed, where he watched a 
spider jumping to attach its thread to a wall. Six times 
it failed, but succeeded on the seventh. Bruce, encour¬ 
aged by this experience of the spider, resolved to per¬ 
severe, and won success. Castle after castle fell into his 
hands until only Stirling remained. Edward II, going 
to its relief, met Bruce at Bannockburn (1314). The 
Scottish army was defended by pits, having sharp stakes 
at the bottom and covered at the top with stakes and 
turf. The English knights, galloping to the attack, 
plunged into these hidden holes. In the midst of the 
confusion, a body of sutlers appeared on a distant hill, 
and the dispirited English, mistaking them for reinforce¬ 
ments, fled. In 1328 Scottish independence was 
acknowledged, and from that period the land was never 
in danger of being conquered, although there were 
many wars between Scotland and England. The 
Scotch were usually allies of the French, and their sol¬ 
diers were found fighting in the French King’s armies. 

Ireland had been conquered by Henry II in 1171 
and the country was henceforth under English rule, but 
in a state of disorder. For three hundred years it was 

* See Volume “World’s Famous Warriors.” 


ENGLAND’S RISE AS A NATION 


37 1 

the constant scene of battles between the Irish chiefs and 
the English invaders and their descendants. 

It was in Edward’s reign that the Jews were ban¬ 
ished from England, not to reappear until the days of 
Cromwell. They had been rigorously treated in accord¬ 
ance with the bigotry of the age before the final step was 
taken. In 1278 they were seized upon a charge of 
clipping coin, and a record of the time states that “of 
the Jews of both sexes 280 were hanged in London and 
a very great multitude in the other cities of England.” 
The Christians guilty of the same offenses were only 
fined. On one occasion all the Jews in the Kingdom, 
including the women and children, were imprisoned 
until they paid a heavy fine as ransom. At last, by 
proclamation of July 27, 1290, all the Jews were ban¬ 
ished, to the number of over 16,000. 


CONSOLIDATION OF THE FRENCH MON¬ 
ARCHY 


The real founder of the French monarchy as a power 
in Europe was Philip Augustus, who reigned from 1180 
to 1223. Under his rule the Kingdom grew to about 
one-half its present size, a great increase in territorial 
extent over the petty principality which he inherited. 
Philip Augustus was shrewd and diplomatic; he exiled 
and despoiled the Jews in order to make money; he deliv¬ 
ered heretics and blasphemers to the church, by which 
he conciliated the bishops; by allying himself with the 
rebel Richard, son of Henry II, he added to the embarass- 
ments of the English. At the same time he waged little 
wars that were without peril, but not without profit, as 
they made him master of Vermandais, Valois, and 
Amiens. Returning from the third crusade, where he 
had quarreled with Richard Coeur de Lion, he plotted 
with John Lackland, brother of the new King of Eng¬ 
land, to despoil the latter. Richard, on escaping from 
prison, arrived in England in a rage, and later waged 
violent war in the south of France. Pope Innocent III 
interposed and made the Kings sign a truce of five years. 
Two months later Richard was killed by an arrow at the 
siege of the castle of Limousin. The crown of England 
should have reverted by the law of primogeniture to 
Arthur, son of an elder brother of John Lackland. The 
uncle usurped it, conquered his nephew and murdered 
him (1203). Philip Augustus summoned the murderer 
to appear before his court. John took good care not to 
come, whereupon Philip, as punishment, declared that he 

372 


CONSOLIDATION FRENCH MONARCHY 373 

should forfeit his fief in Normandy. This rich province, 
from which the conquerors of England had come, reverted 
to the crown, and Brittany also became an immediate 
fief of the French crown (1204). Poitou, Touraine, and 
Anjou were also easily occupied. This was the most 
brilliant conquest a King of France had made. In retali¬ 
ation John formed an alliance against France with his 
nephew, the Emperor of Germany, Otto of Brunswick, 
and the lords of the Netherlands. Philip assembled a 
great army, wherein the militia of the communes held 
their place and gained at Bouvines, between Lille and 
Tournay, a victory whose influence throughout the coun¬ 
try was enormous. This was the first national achieve¬ 
ment of France (1214). Before his death Philip Augus¬ 
tus had extended the French Kingdom to the Pyrenees 
and the Mediterranean. The university had been 
founded, the supremacy of French royal rule concentrated 
by the verdict of the peers against John, the Kingdom sub¬ 
jected to a regular organization by division for adminis¬ 
trative purposes, and Paris was embellished, paved, and 
surrounded by a wall. France began to be a great nation, 
inspired with that longing for military glory which has 
so often proved her bane. 

Louis IX of France was remarkable for the virtues 
least conspicuous in his time and rank—gentleness, meek¬ 
ness, compassion, humility, equity, and public spirit. He 
was at once handsome in face, accomplished in literature 
and art, diligent in business, brave in battle, forbearing and 
even self-sacrificing after victory, munificent in bounty at 
his own expense and not at his people’s charges, strictly 
just toward the great feudal lords, whose pride and power 
it was his policy to lower, saintly in life and devoted to 
the church’s real interests, and yet firm in resistance to 
what he held to be unwarrantable claims. This wonder^ 


374 ANCIENT AND MEDIAEVAL HISTORY 

ful union of qualities greatly increased the power of the 
crown through the moral influence which they exerted. 
Louis IX ruled from 1226 to 1270. During the early 
part of his reign the French dominions were extended to 
the Mediterranean by the cession of the territory of 
Toulouse. Amongst his other services to France, St. 
Louis had a code of laws compiled which put an end to 
the feudal nuisances of private war between barons, and 
trial by the wager of battle. 

Philip the Fair (reigned 1285-1314) was a strong 
contrast to St. Louis, in his high-handed dealing with his 
subjects and his foes; but his policy, too, increased greatly 
the power of France. Under him the rights of the people 
in the towns were first recognized in the political creation 
of the Tiers Etat—the Third Estate or political class, the 
previous two being the nobles and the priests; and in 1302 
the first French Parliament or States-General, consisting 
of nobility, clergy, and burghers (or freemen of the 
towns) assembled in Paris. Widely different was the 
fate of this French Parliament proved from that in Eng¬ 
land, whose powers steadily grew. Philip le Bel waged 
a fierce contest with Pope Boniface VIII respecting the 
papal claims, and, after hastening his death by violently 
seizing him in his palace at Rome, brought the papacy for 
a time in subjection to France. It was now (1304) that 
there began, and for seventy years continued, to be Popes 
at Avignon, in Provence, instead of at Rome, with some¬ 
times a rival Pope also at Rome—a state of things which 
lowered the position of the papacy before the world. Dur¬ 
ing this reign of Philip the Fair feudalism further de¬ 
clined, and the power of the crown in France grew. 

England and France, both strong—one by the prog¬ 
ress of royal power, and the other by that of public lib¬ 
erty—found themselves at war for more than a hundred 



CONSOLIDATION FRENCH MONARCHY 375 

years, from 1328 to 1453. This is the war known as the 
Hundred Years’ War, which the boldness and rashness 
of the French nobility rendered so glorious for England, 
but which ended in the acquirement of great power by 
French Kings and the consolidation of the country into 
one powerful nation. As grandson of Philip the Fair, 
Edward III laid claim to the crown of France, for the 
Salic law did not then have the importance which it gained 
later. However, on the accession of Philip of Valois, he 
appeared to abandon it, and rendered feudal homage for 
the Duchy of Guyenne to the King of France. Never¬ 
theless, Edward cherished a secret hope of supplanting 
him, and in this he was encouraged by the refugee, Robert 
of Artois, despoiled of the Earldom of Artois, and by the 
Flemings, who, having need of English wool for their 
industries, revolted under Jacques Artveld, the brewer, 
against their Count, the friend of France, and acknowl¬ 
edged Edward as their legitimate King. 

The war was fought as one of attack by England and 
of defense by France. English expeditions landed on the 
French coast with varying success. In 1346 the famous 
battle of Crecy was fought, where the English yeomanry 
with their long-bows did such valiant work, while the 
feudal army of the French recoiled before the pitiless 
storm of English arrows. Calais was captured as a result, 
and the French, being driven out, it became an English 
settlement, and for 200 years afforded the English an open 
door into the heart of France. At the battle of Poitiers 
( t 356)> John was made captive, and before the close of 
the first period after the death of Edward (1377), France 
was reduced to bankruptcy, the nobility excited to rebel¬ 
lion, and the mass of the people sunk in barbarism. 
Debasement of the coinage, onerous taxation, and arbi¬ 
trary conscriptions brought the country to the verge of 


376 ANCIENT AND MEDIAEVAL HISTORY 

irretrievable ruin, while the victories of England humbled 
the sovereign, annihilated the French armies, and cut down 
the flower of the Nation. 

Like the Peloponnesian War, the One Hundred Years’ 
War was not one long struggle, but was rather a series 
of wars, with truces in which the combatants, worn out 
by the fighting, prepared for further warfare. One of 
these truces was due to the ravages of the “Black Death,” 
a terrible plague that swept over Europe. This, the most 
terrible plague of sickness that has ever ravaged Europe, 
first appeared in 1346 in India and China, and thence 
made its way through Asia and into Europe. The habits 
of an age which knew nothing of the destructive nature 
of “dirt in the wrong place,” or of the merits of pure 
water and pure air, rendered every street and house in the 
towns a hot-bed for the propagation of fever in its most 
deadly form. The visitation of Italy by the pest in 1348 
has been vividly described by Boccaccio in his introduction 
to the Decameron. There was no country in which at 
least one-third of the inhabitants were not destroyed. The 
population of England, as far as can be judged, was about 
4,000,000, and of these one-half were swept away. The 
crops were left to rot for want of laborers to cut them, 
and town and country were full of desolation, mourning, 
and woe. Travelers in Germany found cities and villages 
without a living inhabitant. At sea ships were discov¬ 
ered adrift, their entire crews having died of pestilence. 
The mad passions of men were stayed in the presence of 
this fearful scourge. 

After the plague the long and weak minority of Rich¬ 
ard II diverted the English from the prosecution of the 
groundless claims to the Kingdom of France, but during 
the minority of Charles VI (1380-1422) the war was 
renewed with increased vigor on the part of the English, 


CONSOLIDATION FRENCH MONARCHY 377 

who were stimulated by the daring valor of Henry V. 
The signal victory won by the English at Agincourt in 
1415, the treason and rebellion of the French Princes of 
the blood, who governed the larger provinces; the ambi¬ 
tion of the several regents, the ultimate imbecility of the 
King, the profligacy of his Queen, and the love of pleasure 
early evinced by the Dauphin—all these combined to aid 
Henry in his attempts upon the throne. But the prema¬ 
ture death of Henry, the persevering spirit of the people, 
and the extraordinary influence exercised over her coun¬ 
trymen by Joan of Arc,* concurred in bringing about a 
thorough reaction. After a period of murder, rapine, and 
anarchy, Charles VII was crowned at Rheims. He 
obtained from the States-General a regular tax (taille) 
for the maintenance of paid soldiers, to keep in check the 
mercenaries and robbers who pillaged the country. The 
policy of his successor, Louis XI (1461-83), favored the 
burgher and trading classes at the expense of the nobles, 
while he humbled the power of the vassal princes. He 
was a crafty ruler, who managed the finances well, and 
succeeded in obtaining for the crown the territories of 
Maine, Anjou, and Provence, while he made himself 
master of some portions of the territories of Charles the 
Bold, Duke of Burgundy. Charles VIII (1483-98), by 
his marriage with Anne of Brittany, secured that power¬ 
ful State and consolidated the increasing power of the 
crown. With him ended the direct male succession of 
the house of Valois. Louis XII (1498-1515) was the 
only representative of the Valois-Orleans family. The 
tendency of his reign was to confirm the regal suprem¬ 
acy, while the general condition of the people was 
ameliorated. 

♦See “Famous Women of the World.” 


PROGRESS OF ROYALTY IN ENGLAND 

The national feeling of the English, in abeyance dur¬ 
ing the political disturbances of Edward II’s reign, reas¬ 
serted itself in the ambitious efforts of Edward III to 
place himself upon the throne of France, and was strength¬ 
ened by the brilliant victories which attended them. 
Though the victories were useless and the war a series 
of raids rather than a well-planned conquest, the effects 
at home were of great importance. The continual want 
of money forced the crown to grant frequent concessions 
to the Parliament. The practice was now introduced of 
either house originating statutes under the name of bills 
and these proposed measures, after being passed or 
approved by a majority of votes in both lords and com¬ 
mons, were presented to the sovereign for his assent with¬ 
out his alteration of their terms. It was also established 
that the sovereign should in no way interfere with mat¬ 
ters under discussion in Parliament, and that freedom 
of speech in debate should be enjoyed by members of the 
commons. Toward the end of this period the judges are 
found fully recognizing parliamentary rights. The spirit 
of the people was raised by successes in France, and the 
life of the soldier played an important part in liberating 
the lower orders from serfdom. The villanage of early 
times had been gradually declining, and rent and wages 
were taking the place of Villain tenure and forced service. 
The terrible ravages of the Black Death upset for a while 
the economical arrangement of the country, and the 
attempt to drive back the liberated serf to his old position 
caused the great rising of Wat Tyler in 1381. The insur- 

278 


ROYALTY IN ENGLAND 


379 


rection was suppressed, but a death blow was practically 
dealt to serfdom. In close connection with this upheaval 
of the working classes was the movement in opposition 
to the Church. The doctrines of Wyclif and the Lollards, 
so much in harmony with the democratic union, could not 
fail largely to influence it, and for a while hostility to the 
Church played a considerable part in parliamentary his¬ 
tory. 

The completion of constitutional system marked by 
the accession of Henry IV did not prevent the recurrence 
of disorder, but during the reign of his son full harmony 
existed between the King and the people. The disturb¬ 
ance which had broken out in France afforded an oppor¬ 
tunity for renewing the war, and Henry V found no diffi¬ 
culty in carrying the people with him in his victorious 
attack upon that country. A statesman as well as a con¬ 
queror, his progress was very different from that of 
Edward III. The treaty of Troyes seemed to promise the 
ultimate union of the two Kingdoms, but the work of con¬ 
solidation was scarcely begun when the great King died, 
intimating to those who should carry on the work that 
the occupation of Normandy should be the limit of their 
aims. The foreign success and domestic harmony was 
of short duration, for the power of the nobles as feudal¬ 
ists had disappeared. They were still too strong to accept 
easily the cooperation of the other orders in a national 
system except from the hands of a powerful ruler. Their 
strength had been increased by the great position given 
to the royal princes. The parliamentary establishment 
of the younger branch upon the throne had opened the 
door to rival claims of hereditary succession. A strong 
government was scarcely possible during the infancy of 
Henry VI, especially as the Council of Regency found in 
the Duke of Gloucester a man of ill-regulated ambition 


3S0 ANCIENT AND MEDIAEVAL HISTORY 

and an opponent with whom it was difficult to deal. His 
greater brother, the Duke of Bedford, devoted himself 
chiefly to the affairs of France, and, though he had suc¬ 
ceeded in maintaining some degree of order in England, 
his early death was the signal for an outbreak w r ith which 
the Council and subsequently the young King proved una¬ 
ble to cope. 

Continual disaster in France still further discredited 
the government. Richard, Duke of York, believed the 
moment had come to assert his right to the throne, which 
was really superior to that of Lancaster, who descended 
only from the third son of Edward II, while York was 
the descendant of the second in the female line and of the 
fourth in the male. He impeached through the House 
of Commons the King’s favorite minister, the Duke of 
Suffolk. The court having permitted the flight of the 
accused, he was recaptured on the high seas by an English 
vessel, whose crew seized him, judged him and beheaded 
him (1450). At the same time an Irishman, Jack Cade, 
razed the County of Kent, gathered nearly 60,000 men, 
and for several days was master of London. The pillage 
of this mob aroused everyone against them, and an 
amnesty offered by the King led to their dispersion. Their 
chief was taken and executed (1459). It was said that 
lie was an agent of the Duke of York. The King, hav¬ 
ing an attack of sickness, Richard had himself proclaimed 
Protector (1454) and when the King, restored to health, 
wished to resume his power, he took arms, aided by the 
nobility, especially by Warwick, surnamed the King¬ 
maker, who was rich enough to feed daily on his land 
30,000 people. Victorious at St. Albans (1455), the first 
battle of this war (known as the War of the Roses), and 
master of the person of the King, Richard had his title 
of Protector confirmed by the Parliament, and after a 


ROYALTY IN ENGLAND 


3Si 

second battle in Northampton (1460), had himself 
declared the legitimate heir to the throne. Margaret pro¬ 
tested in the name of her son, and, aided by the Scotch 
(whom she bought by the cession of Berwick Castle), 
she defeated and killed Richard at Wakefield. The rebel’s 
head was exposed on the walls of York, ornamented with 
a paper crown. His young son, the Earl of Rutland, 
scarcely eighteen years old, was killed in cold blood. 
Henceforth the massacre of prisoners, the proscription of 
the vanquished, and the confiscation of their property 
became the rule of both parties. 

Richard, Duke of York, was avenged by his eldest son, 
who had himself proclaimed King in London under the 
name of Edward IV. The Lancastrians, victorious at 
the second battle of St. Albans, experienced that same 
year (1461), a bloody defeat at Towton. Margaret fled 
to Scotland, and from thence to France, where Louis XI 
lent her 2,000 soldiers on her promise to surrender Cal¬ 
ais. The battle of Hexam destroyed her hopes, although 
she was able to regain the continent, while Henry VI, 
prisoner for the third time, w r as confined in the Tower of 
London, where he remained for seven years. The new 
King offended Warwick, who took arms against him, 
defeated him at Nottingham (1470), and forced him to 
flee to the Netherlands to his brother-in-law, Charles of 
Eurgundy. Parliament, always docile to the will of the 
strongest, reestablished Henry VI on the throne. This 
triumph of the Lancastrians was short. Their violence 
excited great discontent, which permitted Edward to re¬ 
turn with a small army, which Charles the Bold had helped 
him to raise. Warwick surrendered at Barnet, and Mar¬ 
garet was no more fortunate at Tewksbury. This last 
victory had decisive results. The Prince of Wales had been 
murdered, Henry VI dead, Margaret in prison, the parti- 


382 ANCIENT AND MEDIAEVAL HISTORY 


sans of the Red Rose killed or outlawed, and Edward IV 
remained the peaceable possessor of the throne. The rest 
of his reign was noteworthy for the expedition to France, 
which ended in the treaty of Pecquigny (1475), and with 
the trial of his brother Clarence, whom he put to death. 
As for Edward himself he died a victim of his debauches 
in 1483. 

Richard of York, Duke of Gloucester, brother of 
Edward IV, took advantage of the youth of Edward’s 
children to supplant them, after which he had them smoth¬ 
ered in the Tower of London. This usurpation gave rise 
to trouble among the Yorkists. Buckingham revolted and 
sent for the Frenchman, Henry Tudor, Earl of Richmond, 

the last scion of the female line of the Lancastrian house. 
Henry raised in Brittany 2,000 men, landed in Wales, 

and defeated Richard III at the battle of Bosworth 
(1485), Richard dying on the battlefield. Henry VII 
reunited the two roses by marrying the heiress of York, 
son of Edward IV, and founded the Tudor dynasty, 
who reigned for 118 years, until the succession of the 
Stuarts. They had only to suppress some obscure revolts 
raised by impostors, such as Lambert Simnel and Perkin 
Warbeck, and they reigned as masters over the ruins of 
the decimated aristocracy. Eighty persons allied by blood 
to the royal family had perished. Nearly one-fifth of the 
lands in the Kingdom had reverted by confiscation to the 
domain of the crown. English royalty found itself then 
at the end of the Wars of the Roses with more resources 
at its disposition and fewer adversaries to fear. 

Henry VII assembled Parliament but rarely, and the 
money which he did not wish to ask of them for fear 
of placing himself in their power, he procured by forced 


ROYALTY IN ENGLAND 383 

nal devoted to him to strike down those whom the jury 
system did not permit him to reach. Two measures com¬ 
pleted the ruin of the aristocracy: The abolition of the 
right of maintenance, which permitted the nobles to keep 
around them an army of servitors with which they rav¬ 
aged the country, and the abolition of the right of sub¬ 
stitution, which prevented the alienation and partition of 
estates. Henry encouraged commerce and industry, in 
which the nation engaged with eagerness, by the treaties 
which he made, by voyages of discovery which he sent 
out, and by the impetus which he gave to shipping. He 
prepared the way for the union of Scotland to England 
by marrying his daughter, Margaret, to James IV of Scot¬ 
land, the union whence came the rights of the Stuarts to 
the crown of England, to which they succeeded in 1603. 
Another marriage, that of his eldest son, and after the 
death of that young prince, his second son, to Catherine 
of Aragon, daughter of Ferdinand the Catholic, had 
graver consequences. Henry VII died in 1506. Perfidi¬ 
ous, rapacious and cruel, without grandeur in mind or 
action to redeem his vices, he founded, like Louis XI in 
France and Ferdinand the Catholic in Spain, the absolute 
government which in England had its period of brilliancy 
under Elizabeth, 


DEVELOPMENT OF OTHER EUROPEAN NA¬ 

TIONS 

The line of the Hohenstaufen, or Dukes of Suabia, 
ruled the German Empire from 1138 to 1254, and included 
some of the greatest sovereigns of German history. Of 
these, Frederick I (surnamed Barbarossa, or Redbeard) 
reigned from 1152 to 1190. The principal aim of his 
political life was to extend and confirm his sway in Italy, 
where he had much warfare with the powerful and rebel¬ 
lious cities of Lombardy, which had become almost inde¬ 
pendent commonwealths. In 1162 he destroyed the city 
of Milan; in 1176 he was defeated by the Lombard 
League at the battle of Legnano, on the Adige, losing 
thereby nearly all that he had won; in 1183 Barbarossa 
made the Treaty of Constance (in Suabia) with the 
towns of Lombardy, by which they acquired the right 
of self-government, and acknowledged the emperor’s 
supremacy and a limited right of taxation. In 1190 
Frederick Barbarossa perished by drowning, in the Third 
Crusade. He was proud, brave, and liberal; serene alike 
in good and evil fortune; of noble mien; a constant friend 
of literature. 

Frederick II ruled the Empire from 1215 to 1250. His 
high ambition aimed at the subjugation of Lombardy, the 
mastership of all Italy, and the reduction of the Popes to 
their old spiritual office as the leading Bishops of Chris¬ 
tendom. This led him into constant struggles in Germany 
and in Italy. In 1237 Frederick II broke the power of the 
Lombard League by a victory at Corte Nuova, in Lom¬ 
bardy, and his army besieged Rome in 1241. Rebellion 

384 


DEVELOPMENT OF EUROPEAN NATIONS 3S5 

in Germany, combined with fierce opposition in Italy and 
the desertion of old adherents, at last wore down his 
spirit, and he died in the south of Italy in 1250. Fred¬ 
erick II of Germany was, in person and character, a good 
specimen of Middle Age sovereigns—courageous, cul-i 
tured, just; as a man, and toward the church, he is open 
to the charges of sensuality, irreverence, and scepticism, 
which have caused Dante, in his “Inferno,” to assign to 
him a fiery grave of punishment. He was “the ablest 
and most accomplished of the long line of German Caesars, 
and had in vain exhausted all the resources of military 
and political skill in the attempt to defend the rights of 
the civil power against the encroachments of the church.” 
He was an earnest supporter of literature, the arts, com¬ 
merce, and agriculture, and in this way greatly benefited 
his realm. In 1254 the Suabian line of Emperors ended 
with Frederick’s son Conrad. A period of confusion fol¬ 
lowed, arising from disputed succession, until 1273, and 
the power of the Empire (which may be called either 
German or Roman) as the chief State of Europe comes to 
an end with the loss of dominion in Italy and the rise of 
France. 

Hapsburg is a small place in the present Swiss canton 
of Aargau (then in Suabia), and in 1273 Rudolph, Count 
of Hapsburg, was elected Emperor of Germany. He was 
founder of the recently fallen house of Austria. 
Neither he nor any of his successors for a long time is 
of much consequence in history. The power of the 
Empire in Italy was gone, and became ever less in Ger¬ 
many, as the Princes asserted their rights to independence 
or increased dignity. Many of the so-called Emperors 
were never crowned at Rome at all. When the Dukes of 
Austria had become powerful, the electors always chose 

the Emperor from that house. The long reign of Fred- 
Voi,. 1 — 25 


3§6 ANCIENT AND MEDIAEVAL HISTORY 

erick III (14401493) takes us out of the Middle Ages. 
The importance of the Empire henceforth is derived from 
the power held by its head in States both inside and outside 
its olden limits, as Duke of Austria, King of Hungary, 
and otherwise. 

Early in the Fourteenth Century a gallant little State, 
still a free and flourishing Republic, steps forth with honor 
to make a first appearance on the stage of history. The 
mountaineers of Switzerland then fought for and won the 
beginnings of liberty for their country. The center of the 
land was under the control of the Dukes of Austria, of 
the House of Hapsburg, when the three forest cantons of 
Uri, Schwyz, and Unterwalden made (in 1291) a league 
for the defense of their rights. In 1315 their forces 
gained the great victory of Morgarten (south of Lake of 
Zurich) over invading Austrian troops, and in 1318 their 
independence of the Hapsburgs was acknowledged. 
Other cantons and cities joined them. The confedera¬ 
tion consisted then of eight members till 1481, when 
Fribourg and Solothurn joined them, the country of the 

league acquiring in time the name of Switzerland, from 
the one canton Schwyz, which had taken a leading 
part in gaining freedom for the rest. Further attacks 
were victoriously dealt with, as when the Swiss (in 1386) 
utterly defeated Leopold III of Austria at Sempach (in 
Lucerne), and routed the Austrians again at Nafels (in 
north of Glarus) in 1388. The country still nominally 
formed part of the German Empire, but was virtually 
independent. 

At the end of the Fourteenth Century, Burgundy, 
after many changes, had become a powerful Duchy under 
a French Prince of the Valois line, with great advantages 
of position as a border State between Germany and France. 
The Dukes of Burgundy were also rulers of the great 


DEVELOPMENT OF EUROPEAN NATIONS 3S7 

commercial cities of Flanders, and ranked among the 
wealthiest and most influential Princes of Europe. An 
invasion of Burgundy by the Swiss, as allies of Louis XI 
of France, brought them into collision with the famous 
restless warrior, Charles the Bold, whose ambitious 
schemes aimed at annexation of territory all round his 
Duchy. The result was as disastrous to Burgundy as it 
was fortunate and glorious for Switzerland. In 1476 the 
Burgundians were beaten in two great fights at Granson, 
on the southwest shore of Lake of Neufchatel, and at 
Morat, or Murten, in the north of Fribourg. In 1477 the 
struggle ended with the defeat and death of Charles the 
Bold at Nancy, where the Swiss troops fought on the side 
of the Duke of Lorraine. Henceforth the soldiers of the 
Swiss confederation possessed for centuries the name for 
skill, discipline, and valor, which made them sought after 
by European powers as mercenary troops. Switzerland 
became formally separated from the Empire in 1499. The 
Duchy of Burgundy was now joined to the Kingdom of 
France, and the history of Burgundy as a power in Euro¬ 
pean affairs comes to an end with the close of the Middle 
Ages. The victories of the Swiss infantry over the 
chivalry of Burgundy at the close of the Fifteenth Century 
added conclusive proof to previous signs that a revolution 
had been taking place in the art of war. The spell of 
centuries was at last dissolved; the most experienced gen¬ 
erals were astounded to find the mountaineers of Switzer¬ 
land receiving the shock of heavy cavalry on a forest of 
pikes, which proved to be impenetrable; and from this time 
the mainstay of Nations in war became their foot, and not 
their horse. 

The cities of Northern Italy rose to greatness and 
wealth by commerce of the Middle Ages, and a successful 
struggle was maintained by the Lombard League with the 


388 ANCIENT AND MEDIAEVAL HISTORY 

Emperor Frederick I (Barbarossa), ending with the 
Treaty of Constance in 1183, which left those cities vir¬ 
tually independent. The Italian cities took a great part 
in the long contest between the Popes and the Emperors, 
and it is in connection with this subject that we meet with 
the names of Guelphs, or Guelfs, and Ghibellines. These 
names, like the fight between feudalism and freedom, of 
which they are the symbols, were of German origin. I11 
a contest of the Saxons and others against Conrad III of 
Germany, the rebels had a leader named Welf (in Italian 
Guelf), and used his name as a war-cry. Conrad's sup¬ 
porters took the cry of Waiblingen (changed in Italian 
into Ghibelin or Ghibelline), the name of a village where 
their leader, Duke Frederick of Suabia, was brought up. 
Guelfs thus came to mean opponents of the Emperor, and 
Ghibellines, supporters of the Emperor. When Frederick 
Barbarossa tried to force back the leagued Italian free 
cities under feudal government, the popular party in Italy 
became that of the Guelfs, and the Italian feudal party 
were the Ghibellines. The Popes, for their own purposes, 
sided with the Italian free cities against the Emperors, and 
so the Guelfs mean also the supporters of the Popes, and 
Ghibellines the partisans of the Emperors, in the long 
struggle for supremacy in Italy between the church and 
the Empire, which ended in the success of the ecclesiastical 
power and its allies, the Guelfs. Between the two parties, 
the Italian cities themselves became afterward, to their 
great injury, long divided in rancorous feuds; the Ghibel- 
lines contending for the acceptance of imperial rule in 
the interests of unity and order, the Guelfs insisting on the 
right of self-government, and jealously watching munic¬ 
ipal privileges. 

After the downfall of the Western Empire of Rome, 
when it became overrun by the northern barbarians, Italy 


DEVELOPMENT OF EUROPEAN NATIONS 385, 

had either preserved in a remarkable degree, or had recov¬ 
ered with great rapidity, the blessings of civilization and 
freedom. In some quarters these seem never to have 
wholly disappeared, and, when ignorance and feudalism 
were rampant in other parts of Western Europe, the towns 
of Northern Italy were marked by a democratic spirit, 
even when the form of government was monarchical or 
aristocratic, and in the times of the Crusades, the rising 
commonwealths of the Adriatic and Tyrrhene Seas—• 
Venice, Genoa, Florence, and Pisa—acquired a large 
increase of wealth, dominion, and knowledge. Of all 
these flourishing States, the chief were Venice and Flor¬ 
ence. 

Venice was not only the leading maritime power of the 
world in the last part of the Middle Ages, but acquired, in 
the Fifteenth Century, a large dominion on land in the 
northeast of Italy. The form of government was that of an 
oligarchy, in which a few hundred patricians chose a Sen¬ 
ate from their own number, and from the Senators a Doge 
(Venetian dialect for Duke) and Council of Ten were 
selected, and then the ten chose from their own number a 
Council of Three. This Council of Ten has become 
proverbial for a body of secret, dreaded, and irresponsible 
tyrants. Neither the Senate nor the Doge knew who 
formed the Council of Three, and a complete system of 
espionage existed over the actions, words, and very looks 
of the citizens. The famous “Lions’ Mouths” of Venice 
were two small slits in a wall at the palace, into which 
were thrust at night the anonymous denunciations written 
by those who wished to be rid of an enemy through the 
action of the Council of Three. The members of this 
fearful tribunal met at night, masked and robed in scarlet 
cloaks, to judge those accused of political crimes, and 
there was no appeal from their sentence. The executioner 


390 ANCIENT AND MEDIEVAL HISTORY 

led the condemned across the “Bridge of Sighs” to his 
dungeon, where he disappeared from human eyes forever¬ 
more. Under the sway of the Council of Ten, the Doge 
himself had little power, and the body of the people had 
none at all. Nevertheless, the oligarchy succeeded in 
choosing skillful commanders and statesmen to head the 
fleets and transact the business of the Republic, and Venice 
retained her power unimpaired till after the close of the 
Middle Ages. 

Florence—the great example in the Middle Ages of a 
democratic republic, as Venice was of an aristocratic or 
oligarchic commonwealth—was the Athens of the 
mediaeval world. In the Fifteenth Century a mercantile 
family named the Medicis rose to chief power in the State, 
and Cosmo de’ Medici, a princely merchant and popular 
citizen, came to the head of affairs in 1434. Cosmo is 
known as the “Father of his country/’ and he transmitted 
his power to his descendants for some generations. He 
is renowned as the liberal and judicious patron of men of 
learning, philosophers, artists, and lovers of science. He 
employed agents in all quarters for the collection of manu¬ 
scripts in Greek, Latin, and the Oriental tongues, and these 
treasures of literature formed the basis of the famous 
Laurentian or Medicean Library. Large suras of money 
were expended by him in adorning Florence with splendid 
buildings for civil and religious uses. Under the rule of 
the Medicis, the great Tuscan city became a center of 
political, intellectual, and commercial life, such as the his¬ 
tory of the world has seldom seen. The revenue of the 
Florentine Republic exceeded that which was yielded 
annually to Elizabeth by her Kingdoms of England and 
Ireland. The manufacture of wool employed 30,000 
workmen, and the annual sale of cloth amounted, at pres- 


DEVELOPMENT OF EUROPEAN NATIONS 391 

ent values, to two and a half millions sterling. Eighty 
banks managed the financial business, both of Florence and 
of merchants in every trading mart of Europe. Edward 
III of England borrowed large sums of Florentine firms. 
The schools were flourishing. A rivalry existed amongst 
the great and wealthy in showing admiration for learning 
and genius, in collecting books and antiquities, and in 
encouraging art to produce triumphs of architecture, 
painting, and sculpture. We go for a moment beyond the 
assigned limits of the Middle Ages, in order to complete 
this interesting subject. Under Lorenzo de' Medici, the 
grandson of Cosmo, knowledge and prosperity at Flor¬ 
ence reached their greatest height. Lorenzo ruled from 
1469 to 1492, and was a munificent patron of arts and 
science. Skilled in Greek and Latin literature and in the 
Platonic philosophy, he cultivated also with much success 
his own beautiful Tuscan, and wrote poetry with unusual 
grace of style. To show what Florence was in intellectual 
greatness during her whole career, there can be nothing 
more eloquent and convincing than a list of her greatest 
citizens. In literature, the Tuscan city boasts of Petrarch, 
Dante, and Boccaccio; in science, of Galileo; in maritime 
affairs, of Amerigo Vespucci, who was a friend of Colum¬ 
bus; an explorer, though not the discoverer, of America; 
and the preparer of charts and routes for voyagers to the 
New World, which soon (with injustice to Columbus not 
due to Vespucci) received and immortalized his name. 
In art, Florence has won the highest renown through 
Michael Angelo, painter, architect, and sculptor; Leon¬ 
ardo da Vinci, an universal genius, at once painter, sculp¬ 
tor, architect, civil and military engineer, scientific in¬ 
ventor, accomplished gentleman, mathematician, and 
natural philosopher; Andrea del Sarto, the graceful 


392 ANCIENT AND MEDIAEVAL HISTORY 

painter; and Benvenuto Cellini, sculptor, engraver, and 
unrivaled worker in metals, whose exquisite productions 
fetch immense prices at the present day. After the time 
of Lorenzo de’ Medici, the political power of the great 
Italian Republic declined; in 1532 the ancient forms of the 
free State were abolished, and after being subject to a suc¬ 
cession of tyrants, Florence became merged in the Grand- 
Dukedom of Tuscany. 

After the contest between the Christians and 
Mohammedans in Spain, came the rise, between the 
Ninth and Eleventh Centuries, of the Christian King¬ 
doms of Navarre, Aragon, Castile, Leon, and Asturias. 
In the Eleventh Century Castile became the chief Span¬ 
ish State. In the Twelfth Century the Christian power 
gained much on the Mohammedan, and after the defeat 
of the Moors at Tolosa in 1212 there remained to the 
infidels only the Kingdoms of Cordova and Granada. 
The two Kingdoms of Aragon and Castile were now the 
chief Christian States of Spain; and in the end they 
absorbed all the others, Valencia being annexed by 
Aragon in 1239. Aragon was the first Christian State 
in which the people received due recognition in a repre¬ 
sentative assembly. The Cortes, made up of members 
representing the nobility, the clergy, and the towns, 
exercised for a time an effective control over the sov¬ 
ereign. In 1412 a Castilian Prince was elected King of 
Aragon by the Cortes, and his descendants ruled there 
for some time. Meanwhile, during the Eleventh, 
Twelfth, Thirteenth, and Fourteenth Centuries, Castile 
had waged successful war with the Moors, aided in the 
Eleventh Century by the bravery of the Cid In Castile 
also (in the Thirteenth Century) a free parliament or 
Cortes, representing all classes, was established. At 




























































































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DEVELOPMENT OF EUROPEAN NATIONS 393 

last, in 1471, the marriage of Isabella, Queen of Castile, 
with Ferdinand, Infant (or heir to the crown) of Aragon, 
led to the formation of the one compact Spanish King¬ 
dom. The able minister, Cardinal Ximenes, worked 
zealously along with Ferdinand and Isabella in bringing 
all the States into a political and ecclesiastical unity, 
while they strengthened the royal authority at the ex¬ 
pense of the clergy, the feudal aristocracy, and the 
towns. Order was established throughout the land by 
the use of a severe police and a strict administration of 
justice, and the establishment of the Inquisition in 
Spain in 1481 greatly aided the extension of the power 
of the crown. But the Mohammedans still had a foot¬ 
hold in the land in their sole remaining realm of Gra¬ 
nada, and the Catholic Kings, as Ferdinand and Isabella 
were styled, could not endure this reproach. A ten 
years' war (1481-1491) ended in the capture of the 
beautiful city of Granada, the last stronghold of the 
Moslem in Western Europe. The Mohammedan rule 
in Spain had fallen after an existence of about seven 
and a half centuries; and Spain (except the Kingdom of 
Navarre) was thus consolidated into one powerful 
realm, fit to take a leading part in European politics. 

Civilization and culture had been attained, with im¬ 
portant results to other parts of Europe, by the Jewish 
and Mohammedan people of Spain. The severities of 
the Inquisition, directed chiefly against the Jews, had 
not succeeded in “converting” that ancient and stiff¬ 
necked race to Christianity. Accordingly, in 1492, a 
royal edict was issued for the expulsion from Spain of 
all Jews who did not submit to be baptized. Nearly the 
whole race, rather than sacrifice their religion to their 
worldly welfare, thereupon left the country. The 


394 ANCIENT AND MEDIAEVAL HISTORY 


Moors were included in the sentence of banishment, and 
with the Jews and Moors departed most of the industry, 
agricultural skill, manufacturing and commercial enter¬ 
prise, genius, progressive spirit, and learning of Spain. 
A blow had been inflicted on the land from which she 
has not recovered to the present day. 


THE FEUDAL SYSTEM 


Feudalism, or the feudal system, was the most 
strongly marked feature of society during the Middle 
Ages. It was a military institution with a moral and 
religious character, and it was this combination which 
gave it such power over the minds and imaginations of 
men. The church made use of this system of warlike 
origin to promote the growth of Christianity and civil¬ 
ization. At first very noble efforts to attain moral eleva¬ 
tion, religious faith, and knightly courage; in fact, to 
realize an ideal which would have been noble and lofty 
in any age. But gradually there came a deterioration, 
until the feudal chiefs no longer formed an aristocracy, 
or rather a government of Kings, but were isolated 
despots, each of whom was a sovereign in his own 
domains, doing what was right in his own eyes, giving 
no account of his actions, and asking no opinion as to 
the nature of his conduct toward his subjects. Under 
the popular hatred engendered by this abuse of the sys* 
tern, and with the progress of enlightenment and public 
freedom—in fact, when all the good work it could do 
was done, and only a tradition and a form remained— 
feudalism came to a natural and inevitable end. 

“The institution,” as Dr. Freeman, in his “Genera 
Sketch of European history,” says, “arose out of the mix¬ 
ture of Roman and Teutonic ideas. It had been common 
under the Roman Government to grant lands on condi¬ 
tion of military service,” and this was now “combined 
with the Teutonic custom of men following a chief as 
their personal lord.” Such chiefs and conquerors as 

395 


396 ANCIENT AND MEDIAEVAL HISTORY 

Charles Martel, in order to reward their victorious 
officers, divided the conquered land amongst them, to 
be held on condition of doing military service when 
required. Most of the land in a Kingdom came at last 
to be held in this way, so that the great landholders, 
called feudal lords, held large territories from the crown, 
which they in turn divided out amongst followers, who 
owed military service to them. 

A fee, feud, or fief, meant a possession, of which the 
holder (man or vassal, i. e., attendant, companion in 
war) received the right of use and enjoyment, on condi¬ 
tion of fidelity—that is, of affording assistance, avoiding 
all injurious acts, and performing certain services, while 
the feudal lord still retained a paramount right. As the 
son of a vassal commonly devoted himself to his father’s 
lord, he commonly received his father's fief on his 
father’s death, and thus, between the Ninth and Eleventh 
centuries, fiefs became hereditary. Whatever land was 
possessed by a man as his very own was called allodial 
(from all, and old German od, property—estate held in 
absolute possession without a feudal superior), and, for 
security’s sake, many allodial owners gave up their land 
to powerful lords in order to receive it back from them 
as feudal, held on the usual terms pertaining to the feu¬ 
dal system. The feudal lord is known also by the names 
of suzerain and liege, and the vassal by those of liegeman 
or retainer. The system was extended from the laity 
to the church, bishops and abbots holding fiefs from the 
King, and letting out their lands in turn to vassals of 
their own. In return for the services in war and civil 
affairs rendered by the liegeman to the suzerain, the 
vassal could claim, in case of attack, protection from the 
feudal lord, and this caused many powerful Princes to 
hold their territories as fiefs of the German Empire. 


THE FEUDAL SYSTEM 


397 


The several orders of vassals thus formed a system of 
concentric circles, of which each was under the influence 
of the next, and all moved, in theory, around a common 
center, the King, as the supreme feudal lord. By the 
Eleventh Century the whole of France and the German 
Empire had thus become one vast feudal possession, 
and the system was well suited to the maintenance of 
right and privilege against the power of the crown, by 
insuring to a brave and free nobility, when the people 
were poor and disunited, the support, in a moment of 
need, of a powerful military force. The great mass of 
the people, in feudal times, ultimately consisted of serfs, 
who were not slaves in our sense of the word, mere chat¬ 
tels to be sold man by man, but were attached as culti¬ 
vators to particular estates, and passed with the estate 
into the service of another master. The actual slaves 
of the Middle Ages were prisoners of war or men con¬ 
demned to slavery as a punishment for crime. Those 
called villeins were either freeborn men renting land or 
serving for wages, or men in the same condition as the 
serfs. 

One of the mischiefs of feudalism was that it ulti¬ 
mately caused the decay of the national assemblies in 
which, according to the old German constitution, each 
freeman had a right to appear. When large countries 
became organized as nations on the feudal basis, which 
was purely military, the people, trained to arms, trusted 
to their weapons for the defense of their rights rather 
than to the legal checks imposed by legislative assem¬ 
blies, and the representative system was allowed to fall 
into disuse. Then, when war became first a science and 
then a trade, the monarchs, whose power had greatly 
declined through the defiance and rebellion of feudal 
lords, became the employers and possessors of standing 


398 ANCIENT AND MEDIAEVAL HISTORY 


armies, and thus acquired absolute power. In England, 
owing to its insular situation and general abstinence, 
after the French wars of the Plantagenet Kings, from 
interference in continental affairs, standing armies had 
been unnecessary until such time as a powerful middle 
class had arisen which had the needful spirit and intelli¬ 
gence to cope with Stuart tyranny. Thus was England 
narrowly preserved from the fate which befel the con¬ 
tinental nations. The great evil of feudalism was the 
oppression exercised by the feudal barons, protected by 
their castles, and acting as the sole judges of right and 
wrong between themselves and their feudal dependents. 
Appeal to the sovereign was in many cases useless, be¬ 
cause the supreme feudal lord did not possess the power 
of compelling obedience from a member of a great class 
on which he was himself dependent for the provision 
and application of military force. 

The power of feudalism gave way gradually before 
the increasing influence of three institutions—the mon¬ 
arch, the free towns, and the church. The King, as the 
head of the State, became recognized by degrees as the 
one lord to whom obedience was due in the common 
interest. Men learned to prefer one tyrant (if tyrant he 
were, and all Kings are not tyrants) to many, and to 
appeal to the laws administered under the direction of 
the one master, the sovereign, rather than dwell under 
feudalism, where every castle might be a center of 
capricious violence. The feudal nobles became trans¬ 
formed into officers of State, whose duty it was to exe¬ 
cute the decrees of the King and the laws of the realm, 
and thus royalty waxed, and feudalism waned, dwindled, 
and died. The power of the sovereign had come to rest 
ultimately on the support of the great body of the 


THE FEUDAL SYSTEM 


399 

nation, and popular Kings had centered in their own 
persons the powers of the feudal lords. 

The towns also acquired importance and became 
centers of hostility to feudalism. Many of these com¬ 
munities dated from the Roman times, in which thej 
had been free and self-governing municipalities, and 
with the growth of intelligence the claims of the citizens 
awoke to a new life and began to assert themselves. 
Other towns grew by degrees around the feudal castles 
and acquired privileges from the lords, sometimes ex¬ 
tending to charters which granted the right of self-gov¬ 
ernment by magistrates chosen by the community. 
Thus the commons, or middle class, was developed, and 
a powerful agency was brought into operation against 
the absurdities of feudal superiority. 

The church, seeking to gain absolute rule in spiritual 
affairs, took part with the Kings, as monarchical power 
grew, rather than with the feudal nobles; and as the 
clergy themselves owned a large part of the landed 
property in most European countries, and were them¬ 
selves feudal lords in many instances, the cause of feudal¬ 
ism in general was greatly weakened by this desertion. 
In addition to the energetic operation of the above 
causes, the extension of commerce creating wealth in 
other forms than land, the invention of gunpowder, 
making feudal strongholds of no avail, and the inter¬ 
necine conflicts between feudal barons (as in the “Wars 
/of the Roses,” which almost destroyed the old nobility) 
contributed largely to the destruction of feudalism. It 
was killed, in short was slowly done to death, by the 
growth of the civilization which, in its own best days, it 
had helped to foster and to develop. 


CHIVALRY 


Chivalry had its rise in feudalism, and was the noblest 
product of that institution. On this subject the great his¬ 
torian Hallam writes: “As the school of moral discipline, 
the feudal institutions were perhaps most to be valued. 
Society had sunk for several centuries after the dissolu¬ 
tion of the Roman Empire into a condition of utter 
depravity, where, if any vices could be selected as more 
eminently characteristic than others, they were falsehood, 
treachery, and ingratitude. In slowly purging off the lees 
of this extreme corruption, the feudal spirit exerted its 
ameliorating influence. Violation of faith stood first in 
the catalogue of crimes, most repugnant to the very 
essence of feudal tenure, most severely and promptly 
avenged, most branded by general infamy. The feudal 
law-books breathe throughout a spirit of honorable obliga¬ 
tion. ... In the reciprocal services of lord and vassal 
there was ample scope for magnanimous and disinterested 
energy. The heart of man, when placed in circumstances 
which have a tendency to excite them, will seldom be defi¬ 
cient in such sentiments. No occasions could be more 
favorable than the protection of a faithful supporter, or 
the defense of a beneficent suzerain, against such powerful 
aggression as left little prospect except of sharing in his 
ruin. From these feelings, engendered by the feudal rela¬ 
tion, has sprung up the peculiar sentiment of personal rev¬ 
erence and attachment toward a sovereign which we call 
loyalty, alike distinguishable from the stupid devotion of 
Eastern slaves and from the abstract respect with which 
free citizens regard their chief magistrate. ... In a 


400 


CHIVALRY 


401 


moral view, loyalty has scarcely perhaps less tendency to 
refine and elevate the heart than patriotism itself.” Such 
is one view of the spirit of chivalry, so far as it concerned 
the maintenance of the peace and order of the social sys¬ 
tem. 

But there is much more than this involved. The feudal 
system arose among the Franks, a German people, and 
the Teutonic race was always distinguished by its war¬ 
like character, and by the great respect shown toward 
womankind. Hence we have some of the chief marks 
of the age of chivalry—devotion to exploits of arms and 
honor paid to the gentler sex. Taking a wider and a deeper 
view, the same eminent writer observes that “there are 
three powerful spirits which have from time to time moved 
over the face of the waters, and given a predominant 
impulse to the moral sentiments and energies of mam 
kind. These are the spirits of liberty, of religion, and 
of honor. It was the principal business of chivalry to ani¬ 
mate and cherish the last of these three. 

One of the feudal princes enjoined his knights to 
honor, above all, the women, and not to permit any one 
to slander them, because from them after God comes all 
the honor that men can acquire. It is from the close union 
of bravery in knights with this devotion to the fair sex 
that the same word—gallantry—has been used to express 
both qualities. Like other good things, this was carried 
to what appears a ridiculous extreme, when we find the 
warriors on each side in serious conflict, bearing over their 
armor scarves and devices, as the livery of their mistresses, 
and asserting the paramount beauty of her whom they 
served, in vaunting challenges toward the enemy. 

In the code of morals prevalent during the best part 
of the Middle Ages, three virtues were held by mankind 
to be essential to the character of a knight—loyalty, cour- 

VOL. 1 — 26 


402 ANCIENT AND MEDIAEVAL HISTORY 


lesy, and munificence. The first of these—loyalty—may 
be defined, in its original sense, as fidelity to engagements; 
whether actual promises, or such tacit obligations as bound 
a vassal to his lord, and a subject to his prince. It was 
applied also, and in the utmost strictness, to the fidelity 
of a lover toward the lady whom he served. Breach of 
faith, and especially of an express promise, was held to 
be a disgrace that no valor could redeem. “False,” “per¬ 
jured,” “disloyal,” “recreant,” were the epithets which 
he must be compelled to endure who had swerved from 
a plighted engagement, even toward an enemy. This is 
one of the most striking changes produced by chivalry. 
Treachery, the usual vice of savage as well as of corrupt 
nations, became infamous during the rigor of that dis¬ 
cipline. As personal rather than national feelings actuated 
its heroes, they never felt that hatred, much less that fear, 
of their enemies which blind men to the heinousness of 
ill faith. In the wars of Edward III of England with 
France, wars originating in no real animosity, the spirit 
of honorable as well as courteous behavior toward the 
foe seems to have arrived at its highest point. Though 
avarice may have been the primary motive of ransoming 
prisoners instead of putting them to death, their permis¬ 
sion to return home on the word of honor in order to pro¬ 
cure the stipulated sum—an indulgence never refused— 
could only be founded on experienced confidence in the 
principles of chivalry. A knight, then, was held to be 
unfit to remain a member of the order if he violated his 
faith. He was ill acquainted with its duties if he proved 
wanting in courtesy. The word courtesy expressed the 
most highly refined good breeding, founded less upon a 
knowledge of ceremonious politeness, though this was not 
to be omitted, than on the spontaneous modesty, self- 
denial, and respect for others which ought to spring from 


CHIVALRY 


4-3 


the heart. Besides the grace which this beautiful virtue 
threw over the habits of social life, it softened down the 
natural roughness of war, and gradually introduced that 
indulgent treatment of prisoners which was almost 
unknown to antiquity. 

As to munificence, all the romances of chivalry incul¬ 
cate the duty of a knight’s scattering his wealth with pro¬ 
fusion, especially toward minstrels, pilgrims, and the 
poorer members of his own order. The last, who were 
pretty numerous, had a constant right to succor from the 
opulent; the castle of every lord who respected the ties 
of knighthood was open with more than usual hospitality 
to the traveler whose armor announced his dignity, though 
it might also conceal his poverty. Valor, loyalty, cour¬ 
tesy, munificence, formed collectively the character of an 
accomplished knight. Yet something more was required 
for the perfect idea of chivalry, and was enjoined by its 
principles: an active sense of justice, an ardent indigna¬ 
tion of wrong, a determination of courage to its best end, 
the prevention or redress of injury. It grew up as a salu¬ 
tary antidote in the midst of poisons, while scarce any 
law but that of the strongest obtained regard, and the 
rights of territorial property, which are only right as they 
conduce to general good, became the means of general 
oppression. 

Chevalry means properly the usages and qualifications 
of chevaliers or knights, and in the reign of Charlemagne 
we find a military distinction that appears, in fact as well 
as in name, to have given birth to the institution. Certain 
feudal tenants were bound to serve on horseback, equipped 
with the coat of mail. These persons were called Caballa- 
rii (horse-riders, from Latin, caballus, a riding-horse), 
whence the word Chevalier, a mounted warrior, and then 
a knight. The truth is that, in the warfare of the Middle 


404 ANCIENT AND MEDIAEVAL HISTORY 


Ages, the strength of armies lay in the cavalry (another 
form of the word chivalry), and the service of the infan¬ 
try was assigned to the plebeians; the landed gentry, or 
feudal tenants of a certain rank, alone could aspire to the 
name of “miles,” soldier, or were “knights’' in the tech¬ 
nical sense. The dukes and counts, who had usurped the 
rights of sovereignty, divided the provinces among their 
faithful barons. The barons distributed among their vas¬ 
sals the fiefs or benefices of their jurisdiction, and these 
military tenants, the peers of each other and of their lord, 
composed the noble or knightly order, which disdained 
to conceive the peasant or burgher as of the same species 
with themselves. The dignity of their birth was pre¬ 
served by pure and equal alliances; their sons alone, who 
could produce four quarters or lines of ancestry, without 
spot or reproach, might legally pretend to the honor of 
knighthood; though a valiant plebeian was sometimes 
enriched and ennobled by the sword, and became the 
father of a new race. This technical, legal, landed order 
of knighthood was succeeded, in the time of the Crusades, 
by the personal chivalry, the order of personal nobility. 
Knighthood, to be won by merit alone, not claimed as a 
legal right, became the chief object of ambition with a 
noble’s younger sons, who could derive little or no income 
from the paternal estate. This knighthood raised such 
men in the scale of society, making them equal in dress, 
in arms, and in title to the rich landholders, and, being due 
only to merit, making them much more than equal to those 
who had no pretensions but from wealth, so that a terri¬ 
torial knight became at last ashamed to assume the title 
until he could challenge it by real merit. Thus arose the 
class of noble and gallant cavaliers, serving indeed for 
pay, but on the most honorable footing. In the warfare 


CHIVALRY 


405 


of the Crusades, as no man could be called on to undertake 
feudal service for the needful length of time, the richer 
barons took into their pay as many knights as they could 
afford to maintain. In this way the original connection 
of knighthood with feudal tenure became forgotten in the 
splendor and dignity of its new form. Each knight, in 
his turn, was attended to the held by his faithful squire, 
a youth of equal birth and similar hopes of plunder, pro¬ 
motion, and renown. He was followed also by his archers 
and men-at-arms, from four to six soldiers being regarded 
as the retinue or following of a complete lance. 

The warlike character of chivalry had a bad influence 
in causing the illiterate knight to disdain the arts of indus¬ 
try and peace, to esteem himself the sole judge and 
avenger of his own injuries, and to neglect, in his pride, 
the laws of civil society and of military discipline. It is 
certain, too, that the morals of chivalry, in spite of the 
religious side of its character, were far from pure. The 
literature of the Middle Ages, in which chivalry speaks 
for itself, shows a licentious spirit which only reflects the 
facts of the life of the times. Brave knights and fair 
ladies acted, in far too many instances, in accordance with 
a code of morals very different from that of the Christian¬ 
ity which they professed to believe and to defend. Another 
evil was that knighthood, as an institution, widened the 
interval between the different classes of society, and con¬ 
firmed that aristocratical spirit of high birth by which the 
large mass of mankind were kept in unjust degradation. 
At the siege of Calais, for example, Edward III, as a true 
knight, treated his knightly foes with generous considera¬ 
tion, but displayed a harshness toward the citizens which 
puts his character, apart from chivalry, in a much less 
favorable light. 


406 ANCIENT AND MEDIAEVAL HISTORY 


It is a grotesque fact that chivalry, along with the 
feudalism with which it was so closely connected, owed 
its final overthrow to a practical application of chemistry 
—the use of gunpowder in war. Lances and armor could 
do nothing against guns; personal strength was of no 
avail against bullets; infantry became, as a military body, 
the superiors of cavalry; tactics changed; the honors of 
chivalry became disconnected from a display of prowess 
in war; the progress of reason and of literature brought 
ignorance into discredit, and “the ridicule which kills’’ 
gave the finishing stroke to that which, in its day, had been 
so picturesque and glorious, but had degenerated into a 
fantastic and useless absurdity. The spirit of chivalry left 
behind it a more valuable successor. The character of 
knight gradually subsided in that of gentleman, and the 
one has distinguished society in modern times as much 
as the other did that of the Middle Ages. A jealous sense 
of honor, less romantic, but equally elevated, a ceremoni¬ 
ous gallantry and politeness, a high pride of birth, 
a sympathy for martial honor, though more subdued by 
the habits of civil life—these were the features of 
character which, in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Cen¬ 
turies, proved an indisputable descent. The cavaliers of 
Charles I were genuine successors of Edward I IPs 
knights. Time has effaced much also of this gentlemanly, 
as it did before of the chivalrous, character. Since the lat¬ 
ter part of the Seventeenth Century its vigor and purity 
have undergone a silent decay, and yielded to increasing 
commercial wealth, to more diffused instruction, to the 
spirit of general liberty in some, and of servile obsequi¬ 
ousness in others, to the modes of life in great cities, and 
to the leveling customs of social life. Modern society 
owes much of the honor, generosity, courtesy, and kind- 


CHIVALRY 


407 


ness which are blended in the character of a perfect gen¬ 
tleman, to that exalted institution of past ages whose 
soul is a living presence in our midst, though the frame¬ 
work and the system, like the bodies of the gallant knightr 
whose tombs remain in many a crypt and shrine, have long 
decayed. 


CIVILIZATION IN THE MIDDLE AGES 

The “Middle Ages” comprise a period of about a 
thousand years, from the close of the Fifth to the close 
of the Fifteenth Century. Of this long period the first six 
centuries, from the end of the Fifth to the end of the Elev¬ 
enth Century, are usually called the “Dark Ages,” from the 
general lack of knowledge and culture by which they are 
marked in the history of mankind in Europe since the rise 
of civilization. Before the territory of the Roman Empire 
became almost wholly occupied by the barbarian tribes, a 
general indifference to education and literature had spread 
amongst the inhabitants of the Roman world. A lethargy 
existed as to the acquirement of learning, the existence 
of which was both proved and uselessly combated in the 
laws enacted by Constantine, Julian, Theodosius, and 
other Emperors for the encouragement of learned men and 
the promotion of liberal education. When such enact¬ 
ments as these are required in a society which has once 
been highly cultivated, the degradation of man’s intellect 
has already reached a low point, and is sure to go lower 
still. There was even a danger lest the light of learning 
should be quite extinguished by the destruction or decay 
of the books existing then only in manuscript, and repro¬ 
duced at greater cost and trouble than in times when the 
general love of literature had caused the employment of 
bodies of rapid and skillful transcribers. One cause of the 
decay of learning was the general neglect of the pagan 
literature, containing the highest models of literary art, 
by the Christian church. Some of the early fathers of 
the Church were, indeed, men of considerable acquire- 

408 





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CIVILIZATION IN MIDDLE AGES 409 

ments in these matters, but there was a general aversion 
felt among Christians for heathen letters, and a general 
contempt for physical science, which was held to be 
opposed to revealed truth. In its earliest stage, more¬ 
over, the system of monasticism, founded upon the ascetic 
enthusiasm of austere recluses, was hostile to literary cul¬ 
ture. The temporary ruin of civilization on this literary 
side was completed in the occupation of Gaul, Italy, and 
Spain by the untutored barbarians of the Teutonic world. 
They knew nothing of learning themselves, and they soon 
reduced nearly all around them to the same level. These 
intelligent tribes of the central and northern parts of the 
continent could not fail to observe that the arts of civiliza¬ 
tion had not preserved the Roman Empire from corrup¬ 
tion in morals or conquest in arms, and they despised all 
attainments which appeared to be incompatible with suc¬ 
cess in war. 

The main cause of the almost total extinction of learn¬ 
ing was the change that took place in the speech of the 
inhabitants of Gaul, Italy, and Spain. The original lan¬ 
guage of Gaul and Spain was mainly Celtic, resembling 
the tongues still commonly spoken in Wales and Brittany, 
and not wholly extinct in Ireland and the Highlands of 
Scotland. In Gaul and Spain the native speech was, by 
degrees, first completely superseded by the Latin, and 
then, as well as in Italy itself, corrupted in pronunciation 
into a broken Latin called Roman, from which the Italian, 
French, Spanish, and Portuguese languages were gradu¬ 
ally developed—the Romance languages of Europe. The 
classical Latin still continued, with gradual changes in 
purity of expression and idiom, to be the written language 
of such few scholars as were to be found amidst almost 
universal ignorance. Since written language is the 
standard by which the ordinary speech of civilized persons 


410 ANCIENT AND MEDIAEVAL HISTORY 

is rectified, it follows that ignorance of books will lead 
to an evergrowing change in speech, and thus, as well as 
through an influx of foreign words from the Teutonic dia¬ 
lects of the barbarians, the Latin language ceased to be a 
living tongue, and education in the only language which, 
for Western Europe, could be said to have a literature, 
became an impossibility for the mass of the people. 

All books were in Latin, which the people could not 
read, and in their language of everyday life there were no 
books. The Latin language continued to be taught only in 
the few schools which, in the course of the Eighth and 
Ninth Centuries, became attached to monasteries and 
churches, and the mass of the people were wholly unlet¬ 
tered. Few laymen of any rank could read or write: learn¬ 
ing, such as it was, was confined to the clergy, and they 
had little. France seems to have reached the worst point 
of darkness by the beginning of the Eighth Century, and 
England at the middle of the Ninth. Italy was in a 
degraded condition as to learning during the Tenth Cen¬ 
tury; in France, after the time of Charlemagne, slow but 
steady progress was made, and Alfred the Great did much 
for the revival of letters in England. The state of ignor¬ 
ance in England during the Dark Ages is proved by 
Alfred’s own declaration that he did not know a single 
priest South of the Thames (the most civilized part of 
the island) at the time of his accession, who understood 
the ordinary prayers of the church service, or could trans¬ 
late Latin into the English of his day. A great cause, 
also, of this general ignorance was the scarcity of books, 
according to Hallam in his Middle Ages. From the con¬ 
quest of Alexandria by the Saracens, at the beginning of 
the Seventh Century, when the Egyptian papyrus almost 
ceased to be imported into Europe, to the close of the Tenth 
Century, about which time the art of making paper from 


CIVILIZATION IN MIDDLE AGES 


411 


cotton rags seems to have been introduced, there were 
no materials for writing except parchment, a substance 
too expensive to be readily spared for mere purposes of 
literature. Hence an unfortunate practice gained ground 
of erasing a manuscript in order to substitute another on 
the same skin. This occasioned the loss of many ancient 
authors, who have made way for the legends of saints or 
other ecclesiastical matter. Few men of eminent ability or 
attainments appeared during these Dark Ages, from the 
Sixth to the Middle of the Eleventh Century. Beda, or 
Bede (known as the “Venerable Bede”) was born near 
Wearmouth, in Durham, about A. D. 672, and lived till 
735. He wrote a history of the English Church—his 
Ecclesiastical History—virtually a history of England 
down to the date of its completion in 731. This was 
written in Latin, and he also completed a translation, from 
Latin into English, of the Gospel of St. John. Alcuin, 
another famous Englishman, lived from about 735 to 804, 
and was educated in the celebrated school attached to the 
York monastery, where he became afterward the school¬ 
master and librarian. He aided Charles the Great in 
spreading literary culture in his Empire, acting as the 
Minister of Public Instruction, as Professor Morley, in 
his First Sketch of English History, styles him. Alcuin 
was the greatest scholar of his time, and was energetic in 
causing the multiplication of good books in the scrip¬ 
torium or writing-room of his monastery. His writings 
include letters, inscriptions, epigrams, and poems. John 
Scotus, or Erigena, was a Celt who flourished about the 
middle of the Ninth Century. He had a knowledge of 
Greek—a rare accomplishment in Western Europe at that 
ti m e—and wrote in Latin a philosophical work called De 
Divisione Naturae (“On the Division of Nature”), in 
which he maintained the doctrines of a perfect harmony 


412 ANCIENT AND MEDIAEVAL HISTORY 

between reason and revelation, and of the non-eternity of 
evil. He was a great student of Plato, and endowed with 
a lively fancy and a bold spirit of speculation. Gerbert 
(Sylvester II, Pope from A. D. 999 to 1003) was a great 
promoter of learning, and a man of scientific attainments, 
which procured for him, in that dull age, a reputation for 
magic. He wrote on arithmetic and geometry, and con¬ 
structed with his own hands a clock, a globe, and an astro¬ 
labe, the instrument now superseded by the sextant, and 
used for measuring angles of altitude in observation of 
the heavenly bodies. 

The mental state of these Dark Ages is well exhibited 
in the superstitious beliefs which prevailed. In the Tenth 
Century it was believed that the world was to come to an 
end with the year A. D. 1000. The judgment of Heaven 
was appealed to in ordeals and judicial combats. Impos¬ 
tors or fanatics raved about Europe, declaring themselves 
to be divine prophets, and drew many after them into 
riotous folly. So-called miracles abounded, and had mul¬ 
titudes of believers. The Dark Ages were times when 
religion was degraded, morals were loose, and lawlessness 
was rife. Judicial perjury was one of the commonest of 
crimes. An excessive passion for field-sports caused much 
oppression of the peasantry by the nobles, and a generally 
backward state of agriculture, since the leveling of for¬ 
ests, the draining of morasses, and the extirpation of mis¬ 
chievous animals were forbidden by the landed aris¬ 
tocracy, who wanted game-preserves for their pleasure 
instead of corn-fields for their true and lasting profit. For 
five or six centuries the finest regions of Europe were 
unfruitful and desolate. There is no trace of any manu¬ 
facture beyond what was needed to supply the wants of 
the immediate neighborhood. In the Ninth Century even 
Kings had their clothes made by the women upon their 


CIVILIZATION IN MIDDLE AGES 


4*3 


farms. Extended traffic there could be none, amidst the 
general ignorance of mutual wants, the peril of robbery in 
conveying merchandise, and the certainty of extortion. In 
the domains of every feudal lord a toll was to be paid in 
passing his bridge, or along his highway, or at his market. 
Thus enterprise was stifled in the birth, and trade perished 
in the making. The worst of the feudal masters of the 
European world were not satisfied with the robberies of 
fiscal extortion, but came down openly from their castles 
to plunder wealthy travelers, or shared the gains of the 
highway robbers whom they protected in their infamous 
misdeeds. Travelers were seized and sold as slaves, or 
held to ransom, and the Venetians purchased the luxuries 
of Asia by supplying the markets of the Saracens with 
slaves. The subversion of the Roman Empire of the West 
thus led from ignorance to superstition, from superstition 
to lawlessness and vice, and thence to general rudeness 
and poverty. 

But the Dark Ages were not wholly dark. Though 
most of the inhabitants of Europe were chained to the 
soil, without freedom, property, or knowledge, and the 
nobles and clergy alone deserved the name of citizens and 
men, yet mitigations of no mean account existed, and 
soothed the miseries of the poor and helpless. It was the 
Christian church that did this work, as well as kept alive 
in some degree the ancient learning. In Hallam’s phrase, 
religion made a bridge across the chaos, and linked the 
periods of ancient and of modern culture. Three portions 
of the religious system then prevailing were concerned in 
this beneficial result. These were the papal supremacy, 
the monastic institutions, and the use of a Latin liturgy. 
It was these that preserved the Latin language, on which 
hung the sole hope of a revival of letters. The papal 
supremacy kept up a constant intercourse between Rome 


4 H ANCIENT AND MEDIEVAL HISTORY 


and the several nations of Europe. Her laws were 
received by the bishops, her legates presided in councils, 
and a common language was preserved, in Latin, as an 
absolute necessity of the situation. The monastic institu¬ 
tions kept learning alive. The parochial clergy had no 
literature, and almost every distinguished man belonged 
either to a cathedral-chapter or to a monastery. There 
opportunities for study existed, and there books were kept 
in safety. Without the libraries of the monks we should 
hardly have had manuscripts at all. The Latin liturgy 
preserved in tolerable purity that tongue which had ceased 
to be intelligible to the mass of mankind, and in the Bible 
called the Vulgate a still more venerable treasure existed. 
The Latin which kept knowledge from the people in the 
Dark Ages, preserved knowledge for the people in the 
dawn of a destined revival of learning. 

The first religious order founded in Western Europe 
was that of the Benedictines. St. Benedict, an Italian 
of the province of Umbria, introduced a rule of life into 
his monastery of Monte Cassino, near Naples, in A. D. 
529. This system became gradually the rule of all the 
Western monks, and it included the instruction of youth 
in reading, writing, ciphering, Christian doctrine, and 
the mechanical arts. Benedict started a library, for 
which the aged and infirm brethren were obliged to 
copy manuscripts, and was thus one of the first who, 
in the church of Christendom, helped to preserve the 
literary remains of antiquity. From the Sixth to the 
Tenth Century almost all the monks in the West might 
be called Benedictines, as following St. Benedict’s rules, 
which were enforced in the monasteries of Spain and of 
France, and by the Irish monk St. Columba. A branch 
of the Benedictines, called the Cluniacs (from the Con¬ 
vent of Clugny, in Burgundy), possessed 2,000 monas- 


CIVILIZATION IN MIDDLE AGES 


4*5 


teries in the Twelfth Century. In naming some of these 
orders we shall go beyond the limits of the Dark Ages, 
but for the sake of convenience bring them together 
here. The Cistercians arose in a convent near Dijon in 
1098, and became a rich order, spread throughout 
Europe with many hundreds of abbeys. The Francis¬ 
cans were founded by St. Francis of Assisi (in Italy) in 
1210, and are known as the Gray Friars (or Brothers) 
from the color of their robe. The rule of this order was 
a life of poverty, devoted to begging and preaching. 
Afterward, the Franciscan monasteries were allowed to 
hold property, and the order became very powerful, 
including members who were the confessors of Princes 
and virtual rulers of the Christian world, and several 
who rose to be Popes. To this order belonged the 
scholars Bonaventura, Duns Scotus, and Roger Bacon. 
The Dominicans were founded by St. Dominic in A. D. 
1215, at Toulouse, in the south of France. The object 
of their institution was to preach against heretics. They 
became a very powerful order, and spread over Europe 
and into Asia, Africa, and America. The scholars 
Albertus Magnus and Thomas Aquinas belonged to the 
Dominicans. They were the exclusive managers in 
Spain, Portugal, and Italy, of the terrible Inquisition, 
and became great rivals of the Franciscans in political 
and theological matters. The controversialists on the 
side of the Dominicans were known as Thomists, from 
Thomas Aquinas, and of the Franciscans as Scotists, 
from Duns Scotus. 

The monks in the Dark Ages kept alive the vir¬ 
tues of meekness, self-denial, and charity at a time when 
the laity were little given, indeed, to their practice. The 
relief of the poor is the outcome of a spirit distinguish¬ 
ing both Christianity and Mohammedanism from the 


416 ANCIENT AND MEDIEVAL HISTORY 

pagan systems of Greece and Rome, which had little 
of general humanity and sympathy with suffering, and 
can boast of no public institution for the alleviation oi 
human miseries. At the monastery gate those were fed 
who must otherwise have starved; by the monkish doc¬ 
tor the sick were tended who must otherwise have per¬ 
ished of disease. Much was also done for agriculture in 
the reclaiming of waste lands and in improved methods 
of tillage. Nor did the Christian church fail to fulfill a 
higher office still in the shelter which she afforded to the 
fugitive, and the stand which she made against the 
oppressor. By an established law, founded on very 
ancient superstition, the precincts of a church afforded 
sanctuary (a sacred asylum or refuge) to accused per¬ 
sons. With a due administration of justice, this would 
be simply giving immunity and license to crime; in the 
Middle Ages, the right of sanctuary was often a protec¬ 
tion to innocence. 

Between the Eleventh and Fifteenth Centuries we have 
a time of revival and of recovery from the state of degra¬ 
dation and poverty in Europe. The darkness grows 
fainter, the twilight comes, the sky reddens, at last the 
sun bursts forth amidst the lingering mists of prejudice 
and ignorance and superstition. The rise and growth 
of important towns are at once the signs of reviving civ¬ 
ilization at this period of European history, and the act¬ 
ive causes of continued progress. With the advent of 
the Teutonic nations the Roman towns had decayed, 
because the new inhabitants of the old Roman world 
were not fond of the restraints of existence within walled 
inclosures. As civilization was developed in new forms 
the old towns recovered some of their former impor¬ 
tance, and new towns everywhere arose. Many were 
founded in Germany by the Emperors of the Saxon 


CIVILIZATION IN MIDDLE AGES 


4*7 


dynasty, and the growth of commerce was a powerful 
agent in the creation and development or new centers of 
population and wealth. Some of these new or revised 
cities became powerful and independent commonwealths 
playing a great part in the history of the Middle Ages. 

Towns were in many cases the result of a reaction 
and protest against feudal violence. As vassals gath¬ 
ered for protection around the castles of feudal lords and 
around monasteries and churches, towns had their be^ 
ginnings in hamlets. The inhabitants then became bur¬ 
ghers, dependent on the lords of the castles or on the 
monastic bodies. Unions and confederations also arose 
among those who were connected in the cultivation of 
the soil in particular districts. They agreed to render 
to each other such aid and service as they had been 
obliged to render to their feudal lord. The first thing 
was to erect a tower with a bell, to be rung as a signal to 
meet for defence, and so a kind of rude militia was 
formed. Then a municipal government was instituted, 
with magistrates, a common treasury, and the imposi¬ 
tion of taxes and tolls. Thus grew the reviving sense of 
freedom. Then trenches were dug and walls were built 
for defence, and, along with security, handicrafts found 
a home. Artisans rose to a higher position than that of 
tillers of the ground, who were forcibly driven to work; 
the artisan, moreover, had a skill and an activity 
of his own. At first artisans required leave from 
the Liege Lord to sell their work, and earn some¬ 
thing for themselves; for this privilege of selling 
their wares they paid a certain sum, besides giv¬ 
ing a part of their gains to the baronial exchequer. 
In the early days of the new towns the nobility 
imposed rents for houses, and tolls on imports and 

exports, and exacted money for safe-conduct from 
Vox,, i — 27 


41S ANCIENT AND MEDIEVAL HISTORY 

travelers. As the rising communities grew in wealth 
and strength, all these feudal rights were bought from 
the nobles, or the cession of them was extorted by force; 
by degrees the towns acquired an independent jurisdic¬ 
tion and freed themselves from all taxes, tolls, and rents, 
and each place was fairly started on a new and prosper¬ 
ous career. The trading class then divided itself into 
guilds, with particular rights and obligations. Thus did 
cities grow, in many cases, to be independent Republics, 
in Italy, in the Netherlands, and Germany, and France. 

The trade of Northern Europe belonged chiefly to 
the shores of the Atlantic Ocean, the North Sea (or Ger¬ 
man Ocean), and the Baltic Sea, on the coasts of Hol¬ 
land, France, England, Germany, Denmark, Norway 
and Sweden. The sea, in the middle of the Thirteenth 
Century, still swarmed with pirates, and the German 
trade, in particular, suffered greatly from their depreda¬ 
tions. The first trading town erected on the Baltic 
coast was Liibeck, founded in A. D. 1140, and this town 
became independent of any sovereign, except the Ger¬ 
man Emperor, in the Thirteenth Century. Near to 
Liibeck, but connected with the North Sea coast, Ham¬ 
burg (founded by Charles the Great in 808,) became an 
important center of commerce in the Twelfth Century, 
and independent of its feudal Lord, the bishop, by pur¬ 
chase of his rights in 1225. Bremen was established in 
the Eighth Century, and became a flourishing place. 
Riga, on the eastern Baltic coast, was founded by a col- 
only from Bremen about 1190. Dantzic (or Danzig), 
became great in commerce in the Fourteenth Century, 
having been founded long before in the Tenth. Konigs- 
berg was founded in 1255, and soon became an impor¬ 
tant seat of trade. The chief trading city on the Rhine 
was Cologne (a Roman colony, Colonia Agrippina of 


CIVILIZATION IN MIDDLE AGES 


419 


A. D. 51, annexed to the German Empire in 870), which 
carried on an extensive commerce by the Eleventh Cen¬ 
tury in wine, corn, flour, malt, etc. In Flanders, Bruges 
(now so fair in her decay)—the Northern Venice, city 
of canals—was a fortified town by the middle of the 
Ninth Century, and in the Fourteenth had become one 
of the greatest commercial cities in all Europe, being the 
chief entrepot both for Mediterranean and northern 
merchandise. Ghent, also in Flanders, was another city 
of canals and islands, already famed in the Twelfth Cen¬ 
tury for her woolen manufacture, and by the end of the 
Thirteenth it was one of the largest towns in Europe, 
far surpassing the Paris of that age. The greatness of 
Antwerp comes later, dating from early in the Sixteenth 
Century. Among these commercial towns, and others 
such as these, there arose in the Thirteenth Century 
confederacies for mutual protection against pirates and 
robbers, and for the furtherance of their common inter¬ 
ests. The chief of these trade alliances was that called 
(from the old German-Gothic word Hansa, “a league”) 
the Hansa, or Hanseatic League. This powerful con¬ 
federacy embraced at last ninety maritime and inland 
towns, scattered over Holland, England, Norway, Ger¬ 
many, Poland, and Russia. The head town of the 
League was Liibeck, being the meeting-place of the depu¬ 
ties from the other towns, and the chief trading centers 
were Novgorod in Russia, Bruges, London, and Bergen 
in Norway. In the Fourteenth Century the Hanseatic 
League had attained great political importance, which it 
kept until the Sixteenth Century. 

The southern commerce of Europe was found, of 
course, chiefly upon the shores of the Mediterranean Sea 
—on the eastern coast of Spain, in Provence and Lan¬ 
guedoc, in Italy and Greece, at Constantinople, in Asia 


420 ANCIENT AND MEDIAEVAL HISTORY 


Minor, Syria, and Egypt. Commercial intercourse be- 
tween northern and southern Europe began early in the 
Fourteenth Century, and we soon find Genoese ships 
trading to Flanders and England. The north of Italy 
was the flourishing part of the peninsula, deriving 
wealth from the tillage of the rich plains of Lombardy, 
which exported large quantities of corn in the Thirteenth 
and Fourteenth Centuries, though the country had a large 
population of its own to feed. The Italian cities, begin¬ 
ning with the Eleventh Century, divided most of the land 
among them, so that it became “an assemblage of com¬ 
monwealths, independent of any power but that of the 
German Emperor.” Of these cities, Florence became 
important early in the Twelfth Century, through the in¬ 
dustry and enterprise of her inhabitants. She had com¬ 
mercial establishments in the Levant, France and other 
parts, and her trading-class included money-changers, 
money-lenders, jewelers, and goldsmiths. Pisa (an an¬ 
cient Etruscan city, and then a Roman colony) became 
an independent Republic in A. D. 88S, and in the Tenth 
Century, by military prowess and commercial enterprise, 
took a lead among the Italian States. The Pisans 
greatly distinguished themselves against the Saracens, 
driving them from Sardinia in 1025, conquering the Bal¬ 
earic Isles in 1114, and taking a prominent part in the 
Crusades. In the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries the 
power of Pisa was at its height, her trade was spread 
over the whole Mediterranean, and she was supreme in 
the Italian Islands, and on tTie northwest coast of Italy. 
Genoa was her great rival, and to her and Florence the 
Pisans gradually lost their power. Genoa (a Ligurian 
city, named by Livy as Genua, among Roman allies in 
the second Punic war, and then a Roman municipal 
town) became a Republic after the time of Charles the 


CIVILIZATION IN MIDDLE AGES 


421 


Great, and was noted in the trade with the Levant. In 
1174 Genoa possessed nearly all the coast of Provence, 
and the Island of Corsica. She had a long struggle with 
Pisa for dominion in the west of the Mediterranean, and 
then with Venice for supremacy in the east of the great 
inland sea. The Genoese trade was at its height about 
the middle of the Thirteenth Century, when Genoa had 
a large share in the commerce of the Greek Empire, and 
also control of trade in the Black Sea, obtaining com¬ 
modities even from India by way of the Caspian Sea. 

Venice became firmly seated on her islands in the 
Ninth Century, and owed much of her subsequent pros¬ 
perity to the Crusades. Her shipping was largely and 
profitably used to convey troops and stores to the East. 
In 1204 her Doge, Henry Dandolo, aided the French 
Crusaders to capture Constantinople. Venice then ac¬ 
quired much territory on the Adriatic coast, and many 
islands, including Candia (now Crete), her merchants 
having in their hands all the commerce of the Archi¬ 
pelago. By the close of the Fifteenth Century Venice 
was the greatest trading city in Europe, and then her 
commerce began to decline. Amalfi (about twenty 
miles south of Naples) became great in the Ninth Cen¬ 
tury as a Republic, and was distinguished in exertions 
against the Saracens. Before the Crusades she had the 
chief part of the trade with the Saracenic countries, and 
w r as prosperous for nearly three centuries, till she w r as 
attacked and plundered by the Norman conqueror Rob¬ 
ert Guiscard, in 1075, and again by Pisa in 1130. After 
this, Amalfi declined. 

In the south of what is now France, Marseilles kept 
some of her ancient trade. Narbonne (the first colony 
founded by the Romans beyond the Alps) was a place of 
much commerce. Nismes (or Nimes), famous still for 


422 ANCIENT AND MEDIAEVAL HISTORY 

her beautiful Roman remains, had also a flourishing 
trade. Montpellier was greater still at this epoch, and 
possessed a university before the end of the Twelfth Cen¬ 
tury. In Spain Barcelona began to rival the Italian 
cities, both in trade and in war, at the middle of the Thir¬ 
teenth Century. Her vessels went to every part of the 
Mediterranean, and even to the English Channel; she 
fought, not without success, against the powerful Genoa. 
The commerce of Barcelona was at its best in the Fif¬ 
teenth Century. The growth of commerce at this time 
was closely connected, as usual, with progress in manu¬ 
factures. One of the earliest and most important of 
these was the woolen manufacture of Flanders. By 
the Twelfth Century this had become flourishing, and so 
great in the Thirteenth that a writer asserts, with evident 
exaggeration, that all the world was clothed from Eng¬ 
lish wool worked up in Flanders. By the Fourteenth 
Century Flanders was a market for the traders of the 
whole civilized world. Merchants from seventeen King¬ 
doms lived at Bruges, which city, as well as Ghent, was 
a chief seat of the industry in woolen wares. England 
became a rival of Flanders in this trade, after Edward 
III, the father of English commerce, encouraged Flem¬ 
ish weavers to settle there. Wool was at this time the 
chief English article of export and source of revenue. 
There was also much making of woolen stuffs in Italy, 
southern France, and eastern Spain. Robert Guiscard, 
the Norman, introduced a manufacture of silk at Paler¬ 
mo, in the north of Sicily, about A. D. 1075. About 
the same time the Genoese derived a knowledge of this 
from the Moors of Spain. In the last part of the Twelfth 
Century, silk-producing and silk-weaving became com¬ 
mon in northern Italy, and the laws of the cities enforced 
the cultivation of the mulberry-tree. 


CIVILIZATION IN MIDDLE AGES 


433 


The Rhodians of old introduced a code of maritime 
law, and this was adopted by the Roman Emperors. 
About the middle of the Thirteenth Century a written 
code of law had come into existence containing mercan¬ 
tile regulations, and making a good beginning for the 
law of nations by defining the mutual rights of neutral 
and belligerent vessels. This code soon acquired a bind¬ 
ing force within the limits of the Mediterranean Sea, 
and the merchant law of modern Europe is mainly 
founded on its provisions. In the Thirteenth and Four¬ 
teenth Centuries piracy was still common, and much 
trouble was caused through reprisals made by the people 
of one country on those of another. This half-recog¬ 
nized usage of retaliating upon the innocent for the 
doings of the guilty citizens of a State was the origin of 
the modern customs of granting letters of marque for 
privateering, abolished by a convention of the great 
powers in 1856. 

Throughout the Middle Ages the interest of money 
was very high, varying from 7 to 20 per cent. The the¬ 
ologians of that day declared usury to be a crime, and 
the trade of money-lending, as well as much of the gen¬ 
eral inland commerce, was in the hands of the Jews, not 
quite unknown in our times for the same occupations, 
and the cruel persecution connected therewith. The 
Jews, however, flourished greatly, and in the Twelfth 
Century are found in Languedoc as possessors of landed 
property. They were very numerous in Spain, and 
were protected by Princes for their diligence and skill 
in money matters. The trade in money was transferred, 
to a great extent, to other hands early in the Thirteenth 
Century. At that time, the merchants of Lombardy and 
of the south of France took up the business of remitting 
money by bills of exchange, and of making profit upon 


424 ANCIENT AND MEDIAEVAL HISTORY 


loans. The convenience of the system was found to be 
such, that the Lombard usurers established themselves 
in every country, from which “Lombard Street,” the 
locality of banks in the City of London, and the pawn¬ 
brokers’ sign of the three golden balls, the arms of Lom¬ 
bardy, is derived. A bank of deposit is said to have been 
established at Barcelona in 1401. 

From the Twelfth Century a change begins in the 
universal acceptance by mankind, in Western and Cen¬ 
tral Europe, of the orthodox faith of Rome. In that age 
there broke in upon the Church a flood of heresy which 
no persecution was able thoroughly to repress, till it 
finally overspread half the surface of Europe. An erro¬ 
neous belief (as judged by the accepted standard of the 
Scriptures) concerning both the Creator of the world 
and the person of Christ had been carried from Armenia, 
in Asia Minor, by exiles into Bulgaria. From this set¬ 
tlement these doctrines spread, by way of the Danube, 
through Hungary and Bavaria, and also by way of Lom¬ 
bardy and Switzerland, into Western Europe. It is not 
to be supposed, when we speak of heresy (or false doc¬ 
trine), that the particular views above mentioned are 
intended. The point is, that men should have begun 
to dare to think for themselves in religious matters, to 
reject the teaching of the Church, and to protest, as they 
did, against the wealth and tyranny (as they called it) of 
the clergy. The existence of such a spirit is the fact to 
be borne in mind. Besides the Albigenses, we find a 
sect called the Waldenses, deriving their name from 
Peter Waldo, a merchant of Lyons, who headed a con¬ 
gregation of seceders from the Church about the year 
1160. This sect spread rapidly over France and Ger¬ 
many. They were found chiefly and are still in the 
mountain district of the Cottian Alps, southwest of 


CIVILIZATION IN MIDDLE AGES 425 

lurin. The opinions of these people resembled those of 
the modern Moravians, and were of what is called a 
Protestant character. The Bible alone was the rule of 
their faith. They rejected all that was not in accord¬ 
ance with apostolic antiquity. They renounced en¬ 
tirely the usages and traditions of the Roman Church. 
They suffered persecution along with the Albigenses, 
and have been thereby confounded with them. It is 
probable that the effect of the preaching of these and 
other heretical sectaries was very extensive, since they 
appear, nearly during the same period, in Lombardy, 
Germany, Flanders, Spain, France, and England. It 
was chiefly among the lower class of people that their 
influence extended. 

A letter of Innocent III (Pope, 1198-1216) shows 
that certain laymen had procured a translation of parts 
of Scripture into their own tongue (French), and were 
in the habit of meeting in secret conventicles to read 
and preach to each other, avoiding the services of the 
Church altogether. Innocent rebuked these practices 
in a temperate way. The fact of their existence was, 
however, more ominous for the power of the papacy 
than all the defiance of a monarch like King John, whom 
Innocent took pains to crush and bring to terms. Por¬ 
tions of the Scriptures were translated from time to 
time, even during the Dark Ages, into the vernacular 
tongues, and the Council of Toulouse, in 1229, prohib¬ 
ited the laity’s possessing the Scriptures. In the Thir¬ 
teenth and Fourteenth Centuries other sects revolted 
from the established Church. The doings of Wicklif in 
England are familiar as well as the persecutions which 
put down the Lollards. In Bohemia John Huss fol¬ 
lowed the teaching of Wicklif. Huss began to preach at 
Prapue in 1402, and boldly advocated reforms which 


426 ANCIENT AND MEDIAEVAL HISTORY 


would, as lie contended, restore the purity and simplic¬ 
ity of Scriptural Christianity. In consequence of his 
teaching, a large body of German professors and stu¬ 
dents, objecting to his views, left Prague and founded 
the University of Leipsic. In 1409 Huss became rector 
of the University of Prague, and attacked in many points 
the doctrines and practices of the Church. Summoned 
to Rome by successive Popes, he declined to appear, 
appealed to a general council of the Church, and was 
then excommunicated, Prague being laid under an inter¬ 
dict as long as Huss should remain in it. Huss then left 
Prague, and continued his preaching. In 1414 he de¬ 
cided to attend the Council of Constance in Switzerland, 
and defend his opinions there before the clergy of all 
nations. The Emperor Sigismund of Germany gave 
Huss letters of safe-conduct, pledging himself for his 
personal security. When Huss reached Constance in 
November, 1414, he was imprisoned, and kept there 
against the remonstrances of the Bohemian and Mora¬ 
vian nobles. At a public examination before the coun¬ 
cil in June, 1415, in presence of the Emperor, Huss 
refused to withdraw his heresies, and on July 6th was 
condemned and burned to death, his ashes being thrown 
into the Rhine. Such agitations were prophetic of the 
great revolution in the Sixteenth Century known as the 
Reformation. 

During the Middle Ages, increase of wealth led to 
greater comfort in the daily life of mankind. The 
growth of commerce and manufactures at once supplied 
improvements in this way, and gave the means of pro¬ 
curing them. We learn the state of things in Italy, 
which was superior in refinement to France, Germany, 
and England, from a writer of about the year 1300. In 
speaking of the age of the Emperor Frederick II 


CIVILIZATION IN MIDDLE AGES 


4 3 7 


(reigned 1218 to 1250) he declares that then “the man¬ 
ners of the Italians were rude; that a man and his wife 
ate off the same plate; no wooden-handled knives, and 
not more than one or two drinking-cups in a house; 
candles of wax or tallow unknown, and a servant held 
a torch during supper. The clothes of men were of 
leather unlined; scarcely any gold or silver was seen on 
their dress. The common people ate flesh but three 
times a week, and kept their cold meat for supper. Many 
did not drink wine in summer. A small stock of corn 
seemed riches. The portions (dowries in marriage) of 
women were small; their dress, even after marriage, was 
simple. The pride of men was to be well provided with 
arms and horses. But now (about A. D. 1300) frugality 
has been changed for sumptuousness; everything ex¬ 
quisite is sought after in dress; gold, silver, pearls, silks 
and rich furs. Foreign wines and rich meats are re¬ 
quired.” In 1266 we hear of the Provencal knights with 
plumed helmets and golden collars, and of a queen’s 
chariot covered with blue velvet, and sprinkled with 
lilies of gold. Provence had enjoyed a long tranquillity, 
the natural source of luxurious magnificance; and Italy, 
now liberated, under her Republics, from the yoke of the 
German Empire, soon reaped the same fruit of a condi¬ 
tion more easy and peaceful than had been her lot for 
several ages. The great poet Dante (lived A. D. 1265 
to 1321) speaks of the change of manners at Florence, 
from simplicity and virtue to refinement and dissolute¬ 
ness. In the Fourteenth Century there was a steady pro¬ 
gression in England and France of elegance and luxury; 
the clergy denounced fantastic extravagances of fashion 
in dress, and sumptuary laws were passed to restrain 
expensiveness in apparel and food. In Germany, the 
growth of freedom and commerce, and the rise of arti- 


42S ancient and mediaeval history 

sans to the condition of free burghers, caused a great 
improvement in the way of comfort and elegance of life. 
Competence was diffused over a large class of indus*- 
trious freemen; and, in the Fifteenth Century, an Italian 
writer dwells on the splendid and well-furnished dwell¬ 
ings, rich apparel, easy and affluent mode of living, secu¬ 
rity of rights, and equality of laws, to be found in such 
cities as Spires, Nuremberg, Ratisbon, and Augsburg. 
The steadiness and frugality of the German character 
were of great advantage to the working-class. 

The improvement in domestic architecture in Europe 
during the last centuries of the Middle Ages is an indica¬ 
tion of the general progress in social life. In England, 
during the Fourteenth Century, the massive baronial 
castles, with mere loopholes for windows on the lowest, 
story, and the windows in the upper rooms all looking 
inward to the court, began to give way to such splen¬ 
did castle-palaces as those of Windsor, Alnwick, Kenil¬ 
worth, and Warwick. Large arched windows, like those 
of cathedrals, were introduced into halls, and this 
change in architecture bears witness to the cessation of 
baronial wars and the increasing love of splendor in the 
reign of Edward III. In the Fifteenth Century came the 
castellated houses to be seen in Herstmonceux in Sus¬ 
sex, Haddon Hall in Derbyshire, and the older part of 
Knole in Kent. Early in the Fourteenth Century the art 
of building with brick, lost since the Roman dominion, 
was introduced into England, probably from Flanders, 
and superseded to a great extent the use of stone and of 
timber of the oak forests. The English gentry at this 
time, however, were generally lodged in manor-houses 
of little capacity or convenience. The two chief im¬ 
provements in domestic architecture during the Middle 
Ages were things, one of which the civilization even of 


CIVILIZATION IN MIDDLE AGES 


429 

Greece and Rome had never devised—chimneys and 
glass windows. About the middle of the Fourteenth 
Century the use of chimneys, unknown to the ancients, 
is mentioned in Italy and England. The art of making 
glass had been lost in this country, but preserved in 
France, whence artificers were brought into England to 
furnish the windows in some new churches as early as 
the Seventh Century. Glass for domestic use did not 
come, however, into general use during the Middle Ages. 
In other matters of domestic comfort, that epoch was in 
a very inferior condition. The walls of a gentleman’s 
house were commonly bare, without wainscot or plaster; 
few such abodes had as many as three or four soft beds*, 
no books nor pictures w r ere to be seen; silver plate was 
rare; chairs, looking-glasses, and carpets were almost 
unknown even in the great houses. The farm-houses 
and cottages of that time were much more like what 
they are at present, save for the modern use of tiles and 
slates instead of thatch. The architecture of the Mid¬ 
dle Ages can boast of durability and grandeur, and in 
the ecclesiastical w~ay, with which we shall presently deal, 
has infinite grace and beauty. 

During the Middle Ages the powder of monarchs 
became limited over all Western and Central Europe, 
and in Sweden and Denmark, by some kind of national 
assembly, representing the different clasess of freemen 
in the nation—the nobles, the clergy, and the commons 
(or citizens, in general, of the towns). These assemblies 
met in each country for the purpose of granting money 
to the sovereign to defray expenses of government, and 
also of requiring changes in the laws or other reforms, 
and the consent of these bodies of representatives was 
necessary to the validity of some public acts. But these 
representative assemblies gradually declined before the 


430 ANCIENT AND MEDIAEVAL HISTORY 

acquirement of absolute power by the monarchs of 
Western and Central Europe, save in England alone. 
There, as money became more than ever necessary to 
the sovereign for the expenses of civil government, and 
(in the continental countries) for the support of a 
regular army, did the Parliament take a firm stand 
on its constitutional right to give or withhold money, 
and refuse to supply funds for the support of armies till 
securities had been provided against despotism. In the 
Fifteenth Century, in Spain, the Kingdoms of Castile 
and of Aragon had constitutions quite as free as that 
of England; in the Sixteenth Century those free consti¬ 
tutions perished under the attacks of Charles the Fifth 
and Philip the Second. fn France, the power of the 
Parliament gradually decayed, and died out from sheer 
lack of the vitality which public spirit and political intel¬ 
ligence in the body of the nation could alone supply. 
In Italy, with her commonwealths, the history of affairs 
took a special course, which we shall deal with hereafter. 
In Denmark and Sweden the Kings became absolute 
by taking advantage of the quarrels between the nobles 
and commons, which made both an easy prey to usurpa¬ 
tion of their constitutional rights by the crown. In 
Germany, the national assemblies, called Diets, became 
gradually subservient to the Emperors, and lost all real¬ 
ity of power. 

During the latter part of the Middle Ages a general 
increase of popular freedom took place in the abolition 
of the servitude or semi-servitude of the feudal times, 
as regards the domestic slaves and the serfs attached to 
the land. This change occurred in various ways, work¬ 
ing in deference to the general advance of intelligence 
and morality. In some instances the feudal masters 


CIVILIZATION IN MIDDLE AGES 


43 1 


gave freedom to their serfs at the bidding of the church; 
in others, freedom was acquired by residence for a cer¬ 
tain time in a chartered town. Justice began to be 
administered more regularly according to fixed laws, 
and a more effectual police was maintained. The courts 
of judicature, whether they were guided by the feudal 
customs or by the Roman law, resolved questions with 
precision and uniformity, and the public ideas of justice 
and good faith were thereby amended. By the close of 
the Middle Ages a great improvement in the general 
maintenance of order was to be observed. Lawless 
rapine and the private warfare between feudal barons 
had almost ceased. A regular police was established 
in towns for internal security and for defense against 
marauders outside the walls. The increase of wealth, 
and of the numbers of those who, in their degree, pos¬ 
sessed somewhat to defend, produced the effect usual 
in free communities, of greater security to property and 
life. As the mind of Europe began to awake from the 
sleep of the Dark Ages, the study of civil law was one 
of the earliest signs of new intellectual life. The sys¬ 
tem of jurisprudence contained in the code of Justinian, 
which has been already described, was taught early in 
the Twelfth Century in a school of civil law at Bologna, 
in Italy. Rapid progress was made in this new pursuit. 
Lombardy became rich in learned lawyers, and the 
Bologna schools were distinguished throughout this 
century. Universities arose at Naples, Padua, and 
other places, and the Roman law was there, too, a chief 
object of study. The municipal freedom of the Italian 
cities, where matters of dispute were settled by magis¬ 
trates chosen by the citizens themselves, led to the com¬ 
pilation of a more extensive and accurate code of writ¬ 
ten laws, based upon the Roman system, and the fame 


432 ANCIENT AND MEDIAEVAL HISTORY 


of this renovated jurisprudence spread from Italy over 
other parts of Europe. Justinian’s code was studied in 
the universities of Montpellier and Toulouse, and the 
Roman law became the rule of all tribunals in the south 
of France, in Spain, and in Germany, possessing also 
much influence in northern France. So justly great 
have been the renown and authority of the old Roman 
jurists, that portions of their law have been wrought 
into the modern codes of France and Prussia, and their 
sagacity is likely to be a guide to legislators for genera¬ 
tions still far distant from our times. Thus grandly dur¬ 
able in its beneficence is some of the work done for 
mankind by the men of ancient Rome. 

The establishment of public schools in France was 
due to Charles the Great. His two successors, Louis 
the Debonnaire and Charles the Bald, also encouraged 
learning, and even in the Ninth Century schools flour¬ 
ished at Lyons, Rheims, and in other cities. The basis 
of study at this time was, however, very cramped and 
pedantic; even Alcuin forbade the reading of the Latin 
poets, and general learning (or all beyond the study of 
a narrow theology) was discouraged. Early in the 
Twelfth Century the new ardor for intellectual pursuits 
began to show itself in Europe. The first university to 
become distinguished was that of Paris, under the teach¬ 
ing of the famous Abelard, a schoolman or scholastic 
philosopher of bold and brilliant genius. Abelard was 
noted in his own day as a grammarian, orator, logician, 
poet, musician, philosopher, theologian, and mathema¬ 
tician; by a strange fate, he is now celebrated only as the 
martyr of love, through the letters which passed between 
him and Heloise, with whom he was miserably and 
shamefully connected. He began to lecture at Paris on 
rhetoric, philosophy, and theology about 1104, and had 


CIVILIZATION IN MIDDLE AGES 


433 


St Bernard among his pupils. His own misconduct 
drove him from Paris, and he was condemned for 
heresy at a council in 1122, and died in disgrace and 
misery in 1142. Abelard was almost the first who 
awakened mankind after the Dark Ages to a sympathy 
with intellectual excellence, and his life is remarkable 
amongst those of literary men for success and failure, 
glory and shame, the admiration and the persecution of 
mankind. In England the Universities of Oxford and 
Cambridge arose, that of Oxford being a school of 
learning before the Norman Conquest, that of Cam¬ 
bridge being founded in the Thirteenth Century. In 
Germany, the first university was that of Prague, 
founded in 1350; that of Leipsic (Leipzig) followed in 
1409. In Spain, the University of Salamanca was 
founded about the end of the Twelfth Century, and be¬ 
came famous, flourishing till the Sixteenth Century. 
The golden age of universities began with the Thir¬ 
teenth Century, and students from all parts of Europe 
resorted to them, that of Paris being more frequented 
than any other. There were also, in France, the Uni¬ 
versities of Orleans, Angers, Bourges, and Toulouse. 
In the Twelfth Century the Jews cultivated the studies 
of medicine and the Rabbinical literature in their own 
academy at Montpellier. 

The University of Paris was unrivaled for the study 
of scholastic theology.* A peculiar product of the awak¬ 
ened intellect of mankind in Europe in the Middle Ages 
was the scholastic philosophy, the great aim of which 
was to reduce the doctrines of the church to a scientific 
system. 

The two great names in science during the Middle 
Ages are those of Albertus Magnus and Roger Bacon. 

* See the “Scholastics" in Volume “World’s Great Philosophers.” 


434 ANCIENT AND MEDIAEVAL HISTORY 


Albertus Magnus, a native of Swabia, became in 1222 a 
monk of the Dominican order, and had the great Thomas 
Aquinas as his pupil at Cologne, where Albertus became 
rector in 1249. He rose to be Bishop of Ratisbon in 1260, 
but soon resigned his charge in order to devote himself 
to literary and scientific work. He wrote commentaries 
on Aristotle, and studied the sciences of arithmetic, geom¬ 
etry, optics, music, and astronomy. Albertus Magnus 
was probably the most learned man of his age, and was 
so far beyond most of his contemporaries that he was 
accused of dealing in magical arts, or holding communion 
with Satan—the penalty of intellectual attainments and 
originality at that time. Roger Bacon was one of the 
greatest men that arose during the Middle Ages, and pos¬ 
sessed extraordinary genius for scientific research and dis¬ 
covery. Born in 1214, in Somersetshire, he showed an 
early taste for learning, studied at Oxford and at Paris, 
and became a Franciscan monk at Oxford in 1240. He 
was a good scholar in Latin, Hebrew, and Greek—a rare 
thing in the Thirteenth Century. He was thwarted in his 
scientific studies both by poverty and by the jealousy of 
the monks of his order, who denounced his opinions to 
the Pope, and caused his imprisonment for a time. A new 
Pope, Clement IV (1265-69), admired Bacon’s abilities, 
and encouraged him to write. This led to the production 
in 1268-69 his chief book, the Opus Majus (“Greater 
Work”), followed by two others. These books of Bacon 
the Friar laid the foundations of the philosophy of Bacon 
the Chancellor at a later time. The great Franciscan 
declared that the four grounds of human ignorance were 
—“trust in inadequate authority, the force of custom, the 
opinion of the inexperienced crowd, and the hiding of 
one’s own ignorance with the parading of a superficial 
wisdom.” This teaching is worthy of Socrates himself, 


CIVILIZATION IN MIDDLE AGES 


435 


and entitles Roger Bacon to the admiration and gratitude 
of mankind, when we consider the influences by which he 
was surrounded and the persecution which he fought and 
endured. He advocated the “free honest questioning of 
Nature/' and urged students to aim at reading books in 
the original text, especially the Bible and Aristotle. He 
insisted on mathematics as important, with a particular 
regard for optics, and on the experimental study of nature, 
which he believed to be at the root of all sciences, and a 
basis of religion. In optics this ingenious and original 
observer understood the refraction of light, and convex 
and concave lenses, involving the principle of the tele¬ 
scope, which he either invented or improved. He was 
good at geography and astronomy, and made a corrected 
calendar, of which the Bodleian Library at Oxford pos¬ 
sesses a copy. It is little to his discredit, in such an age, 
that he believed in the superstitions of astrology and of the 
philosopher’s stone. Roger Bacon (whose invention of 
gunpowder is a matter of doubt) is a man of whom Eng¬ 
land may well be proud, as an early forerunner of his illus¬ 
trious namesake and of Sir Isaac Newton, the prince of 
all natural philosophers. After being accused of magical 
arts, and enduring a second imprisonment for ten years, 
he died about 1293. 

Early in the Twelfth Century Arabian writings on ge¬ 
ometry and physical science were brought into Europe. A 
high degree of culture had been reached in Spain by its 
Mohammedan conquerors as early as the Tenth Century. 
Schools, libraries, and universities were established, and 
professors lectured on literature, rhetoric, astronomy, and 
pure mathematics. The works of Greek philosophy came, 
through the Arabic, into Latin, and so passed into the 
possession of the European scholars, few r of whom could 
read the Greek originals. Among the Saracenic scholars 


436 ANCIENT AND MEDIAEVAL HISTORY 

of Spain were Avicenna, a physician and philosopher, who 
died in 1037, and Averroes, of Cordova, a famed com¬ 
mentator on Aristotle, who died in 1198. Zoology, 
botany, chemistry, and especially medicine, were studied, 
and to the Moorish civilization we owe the mode of nota¬ 
tion in arithmetic, called the Arabic figures, and the words 
algebra, alcohol, alchemy, nadir, zenith, elixir, syrup, 
cipher, and many others. The Arabian scholars derived 
much of their mathematical knowledge from the Greeks 
and the Hindoos. The caliphs of the Saracenic Empire 
in Asia had caused translations to be made into Arabic 
from Euclid, Archimedes, and other Greek geometers. 
The Arabian arithmetic (with its symbols) came from 
India; algebra either from the Greeks or Hindoos. A 
Saracenic author named Ben Musa wrote on algebra early 
in the Ninth Century, and dealt with the subject so far as 
to include the solution of quadratic equations. While the 
scholars of Rome and Constantinople were declaring the 
earth to be flat, the Spanish Moors were teaching geog¬ 
raphy in their common schools from globes, and the 
Arabs were the first to build in Europe observatories for 
astronomical research. The tower which the Moors built 
at Seville with this end in view was turned, by the Span¬ 
iards who drove them from the land, into a belfry, because 
they did not know what else to make of it. The present 
condition of Spain is not unconnected with what lies 
underneath the surface here. It is a fact that Europe, long 
delivered from the ages of darkness and brought out into 
a marvelous light, has never to this day made any fitting 
acknowledgment of the great debt due to the Mohamme¬ 
dan conquerors of Spain. 

Nor must the Jewish learning in the Middle Ages be 
forgotten. Astronomy, philosophy, mathematics, and 
medicine were eagerly studied by Jews in the Arabian 


CIVILIZATION IN MIDDLE AGES 


437 


schools of Spain. In the Twelfth Century lived the great 
Jewish Rabbi, Maimonides, born at Cordova, a man who 
studied Jewish and Arabic literature and Greek philosophy 
(in an Arabic translation of Aristotle), and had much 
acquaintance with medicine. He became physician to the 
Sultan of Egypt, and acquired great fame by his abilities, 
learning, and high character. His theological writings 
had great influence on Judaism, and in the Thirteenth 
Century his books were widely circulated in Europe by 
Latin translations. Maimonides died in Egypt in 1204, 
and was buried in Palestine. 

One of the chief causes of intellectual improvement in 
the latter part of the Middle Ages was the development of 
those new languages that sprang out of the corruption of 
Latin—the Romance tongues. The Provencal poets of 
chivalry and romance flourished, in the Twelfth and Thir¬ 
teenth Centuries, in the south of France and the north of 
Spain. The language which had there grown up, under 
sunny skies and in a state of greater freedom than was 
known elsewhere, was noted for sweetness, tenderness, 
clearness, and wealth. The region where this luscious 
tongue was spoken was the land of gallantry and song, 
and of religion mingled with the praise of earthly love. 
The taste for poetry was general among the nobles and 
the knights, and greatly encouraged by the princes of the 
ruling house. In their court, then the most splendid and 
refined in Europe, was gathered the circle of noble poets 
called Troubadours (in Italian, Trovatori; in Norman- 
French, Trouveres or Trouveurs, i.e. the finders or invent¬ 
ors of verses). The poetical compositions of these per¬ 
sons were of no great merit, it would appear, and have 
mostly perished; but they greatly influenced modern 
poetry in the way of rhyme and meters. The strains of 
the Provencal poetry were of that class which is allied to 


438 ANCIENT AND MEDIAEVAL HISTORY 

music, and largely dependent upon that for effect. In the 
Norman-French dialect of the North, the writers called 
Trouveurs produced poetical fictions about King Arthur 
and Charles the Great toward the end of the Twelfth Cen¬ 
tury, and in the Thirteenth we have the famous Roman de 
la Rose, a poetical allegory of love and other passions. In 
this same tongue—the Langue d’Oil (corrupted from 
Latin hoc illud), as opposed to the Provencal or Langue 
d’Oc—prose romances, history, and other compositions 
began to be written in the Thirteenth Century. In the early 
Spanish, we have the metrical life of the famous hero, 
the Cid, Ruy Diaz, probably written about the middle of 
the Twelfth Century. 

In Italian, the Middle Ages produced one of the great¬ 
est of all poets, Dante (in full, Durante Alighieri), born 
at Florence in 1265. His great poem is called the Divine 
Comedy, and is a representation of the three kingdoms of 
futurity, Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise, divided into one 
hundred cantos, containing about 14,000 lines. Dante 
created his country’s national poetry, and is one of the 
most original and powerful of writers—bold and concise, 
and, as occasion calls, soft, sweet, and terrible in turn. 
This great genius, but rudely treated in his lifetime, and 
since half a century after his death regarded with an 
immense reverence by his countrymen, died at Ravenna in 
1321. His poetry was the first good verse that had 
appeared in Europe for nearly a thousand years, and he 
has never been surpassed, if equaled, in epic poetry since. 
The Italian poet Petrarch (Francesco Petrarch), his 
country’s greatest lyric versifier, lived from 1304 to 1374, 
and is famous for his sonnets, his love for Laura, and the 
services which he rendered in the revival of classical learn¬ 
ing. His merits were amply recognized in his lifetime 
and in 1341 Petrarch was solemnly crowned with a wreath 


CIVILIZATION IN MIDDLE AGES 


439 

of bay, in the capitol of Rome, as the laureate poet, or 
national singer of Italy. 

Chaucer, born about 1340, and who died in 1400, is 
the first really great name in English literature. He held 
various offices and went abroad in subordinate capacities 
on the service of the King, and in Italy was introduced to 
literature in its noblest mediaeval shape, and in one of 
the noblest shapes it has appeared in any age. He had 
written poetry before this, but it was the work of the poets 
Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio’s prose, that most pro¬ 
foundly impressed him and influenced him, and he bor¬ 
rowed much of their style and grace and occasionally inci¬ 
dents as well. His Canterbury Tales, the most famous of 
his works, consists of twenty-two tales in verse, with two 
in prose, told by twenty-three pilgrims out of the twenty- 
nine who meet at the Tabard Inn in Southwark on their 
way to the shrine of Thomas a Becket at Canterbury. 
They follow the lead of Boccaccio in that a series of tales is 
hung together upon a connecting thread of narrative. In 
the Tales Chaucer shows a genius akin to Shakespeare’s. 
Not only is there a rare dramatic power manifested 
clearly, though there was not yet a drama, but he had also 
the calm sense of highest truth and that kindly breadth 
of human sentiment without which a power such as 
Shakespeare’s can not be. His Troilus and Cressida are 
versions of two of the most famous poems written by 
Boccaccio, and the influence of Dante was shown upon his 
later work. The House of Fame was a brilliant effort of 
imaginative power, and the Legend of Good Women 
showed the high esteem for womanly truth and beauty 
felt by the poet. John Gower, born about 1325, and dying- 
1408, was a contemporary and friend of Chaucer, who 
calls him the “moral Gower,” from his grave and sen¬ 
tentious style, even when treating upon topics which might 


44 ° ANCIENT AND MEDIAEVAL HISTORY 

well be treated in a lively manner, such as his “Confes- 
sio Amantis,” which is his best known work. 

In Germany, the native genius asserted itself in the 
production of the great epic poem, called the Nibelungen 
Lied (“Song of the Nibelungen,” an ancient Burgundian 
tribe). The hero of the work is called Siegfried; the 
heroine is Brunhild, an Icelandic princess; the incidents 
are those of the Teutonic and Scandinavian mythology; 
the time of the historical basis of the poem is about 440 
A. D., and the scene is on the Rhine, and on the borders of 
Hungary and Austria. The author is not certainly 
known; it was written about the middle of the Twelfth 
Century. The German critics place this great epic, in some 
respects, above the “Iliad”; it is the work of a true poet, 
but of a different class from the Homeric. 

The chief artistic boast of the Middle Ages is to be 
found in the architecture, whose noble works men still 
behold with admiration and delight. In these, art lent 
her aid to religion, and in the twelfth and following cen¬ 
turies arose the glorious cathedrals and abbeys which 
adorn the ancient towns and beauteous nooks of France 
and England, Belgium and Holland, Germany, Italy, and 
Spain. In these structures sublimity of general composi¬ 
tion is united with the beauties of variety and form, and 
with intricacy of parts, and skillful effects of light and 
shade—all that can, in architectural effect, charm the eye 
and elevate the soul. The rounded arch of the Norman 
style—imitated from the Moorish and the Byzantine 
buildings—began to give place, about the middle of the 
Twelfth Century, to the pointed arch of what is called 
the Gothic architecture. The origin of this style is as 
obscure as its beauty is apparent. It was accompanied, in* 
many instances, with a great profusion of ornament, such 
as may be seen in the beautiful cathedral of Amiens, and 


CIVILIZATION IN MIDDLE AGES 


441 


many similar productions of France. For three centuries 
the Gothic style prevailed, and the great cathedrals of 
Milan and Cologne belong to the Fifteenth Century. Of 
these the latter has only been lately completed; that of 
Milan remains unfinished yet, a wondrous dream in white 
marble, bristling with pinnacles and statues, unrivaled 
in its kind among all the works of men. It has been said 
that in these cathedrals of the Middle Ages'‘the artist used 
a building as a book on which to express, in powerful 
language, his own peculiar disposition, his hopes, his senti¬ 
ments, his thoughts, and his experience.” The great 
awakening of mind at the close of the Middle Ages led 
to the wildness and exuberance of fancy displayed in the 
richly varied decoration of the later style; the grotesque 
carvings plentifully seen in it are illustrations of fables, 
legends, and romances, as well as the individual expres¬ 
sions of the artist’s thoughts and embodiments of his 
creed. 

The introduction of Christianity acted at first as a 
check upon the art of painting. The Greek and Roman 
arts had represented the pagan gods abhorred by the early 
Christians, and painting fell into discredit. By degrees the 
art came to be used to illustrate the new religion, though 
its development was again checked by the excesses 
of the Iconoclasts of the Eighth and Ninth Centuries in 
the Byzantine Empire, who destroyed many works of art 
in their zeal against image-worship. The Byzantine 
school of painting is known by its gilded backgrounds, 
bright colors, and comparative indifference to truthful¬ 
ness of representation, beauty of form, and grandeur of 
conception. This school of art was the parent of the great 
schools of Italy and of the Rhenish or Old Cologne school 
in Germany. Early in the Thirteenth Century painting was 
spread from Constantinople to other parts of Europe. 


442 ANCIENT AND MEDIAEVAL HISTORY 


After the capture of that city by the Venetians and the 
Latin Crusaders in 1204, many Byzantine painters passed 
into Italy and Germany. A new civilization had now 
arisen in Italy, and, under the influences now brought to 
bear, painting there reached, during the next three cen¬ 
turies, a perfection never attained before or since. In the 
Fourteenth Century the Italian artists set themselves free 
from the conventional trammels of the Byzantine style. 
The chief leaders in this were Cimabue, born at Florence 
in 1240, and Giotto, born in a Florentine village about 
1276, a pupil of Cimabue’s. Cimabue forms the link 
between the ancient and modern schools of painting. Poor 
in coloring and perspective,he had grandeur of style, accu¬ 
rate drawing, natural expression, noble grouping, and fine 
disposition of drapery. Giotto is the first really great 
painter of modern times. His influence spread through¬ 
out Italy and into other lands, his human figures having 
truth, nature, dignity, correctness, life, and freedom pre¬ 
viously unattained. For nearly two centuries the Floren¬ 
tine school of art was pre-eminent, reaching its height in 
the first half of the Sixteenth Century. The Roman, 
Venetian, Bolognese, Milanese, Parmesan, and Neapolitan 
schools of painting come after the Middle Ages. The 
Rhenish—or Old Cologne—school of Germany flourished 
from the Fourteenth to the Fifteenth Century. The 
Flemish painters begin with the brothers Van Eyck, of 
Bruges, early in the Fifteenth Century. The Dutch, 
French, and Spanish painters come after the Middle Ages, 

and the English later still. Such were the beginnings and 

* 

first results of that great reawakening of intelligence and 
progress of culture which mark the closing centuries of 
the thousand years of history called the Middle Ages. 



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